Jim,
I am personally in sympathy with the general drift
of the last paragraph of your posting below, but can't
suppress my curiosity regarding what, specifically,
you might have in mind as far as the borderline
"outrageous ways" are concerned in which libraries/
librarians would now have to cooperate.
What you understand under borderline "revolutionary
ways", on the other hand, is fairly clear to me from
your previous postings.
Not just revolutionary cooperation, therefore, but
even outrageous cooperation. Sounds potentially
quite dramatic. Certainly for such a supposedly
staid and reputable profession as ours.
- Laval Hunsucker
Breukelen, Nederland
----- Original Message ----
From: Weinheimer Jim <j.weinheimer_at_AUR.EDU>
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Sent: Fri, April 9, 2010 9:33:14 PM
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] WorldCat Rights and Responsibilities for the OCLC Cooperative
These are some of the points I was trying to make. There is an awful lot that could be done right now to help a record made in Germany or Russia or China, more useful to a English-speaker, and more importantly: vice'versa.
Also, perhaps tools such as Google Translate could help with translating the rather restricted language used in many of our notes. Google may even be willing to cooperate.
So, it's *not* that I am saying that English means higher quality, but that different catalogs reflect the needs of their users. In English language catalogs, people need English language cataloging information, but different catalogs in different cultures have different needs. Russians need Russian cataloging; French need French, Italians need Italian, and so on and so on.
Libraries and librarians must cooperate in this economic climate in all kinds of innovative ways that, in my opinion, may border on the revolutionary or outrageous. These are some of the areas that the cataloging community needs to focus, certainly *not* on RDA, which only continues the same methods and the same problems while making everyone spend a lot more money.
James L. Weinheimer j.weinheimer_at_aur.edu
Director of Library and Information Services
The American University of Rome
Rome, Italy
Received on Sun Apr 11 2010 - 09:05:48 EDT