Re: Online Catalogs: What Users and Librarians Want

From: Karen Coyle <lists_at_nyob>
Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 09:20:16 -0700
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Frances Dean McNamara wrote:
> Also, the librarians say duplicate records is a number one quality
> problem.  Users say linking to online content is the number one quality
> issue.  But OCLC is the one who is out there advocating creating lots
> of separate records for every digital version of a work.  Dumb idea.
> I think they just want to sell more cataloging records and up their
> Revenue. 
>

Actually, the 'dumb idea' is in the cataloging rules. And it's not an 
easy one to solve when you have a 'unit record' concept like we do in 
MARC. It's one of the problems that FRBR should solve for us if we 
create a structure that allows manifestations to link to expressions 
which link to works. But when you have it all together in one MARC 
record, you have to choose one physical format as the one represented by 
the record. We went through this ad nauseum in all of the discussion of 
'multiple versions' and never found a solution that was compatible with 
MARC *and* facilitated record sharing.

kc

-- 
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Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596   skype: kcoylenet
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
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Received on Wed Apr 22 2009 - 12:22:39 EDT