> The MARC tag 245 means "title statement", and the code "a" means, uh, title.
> This perticular madness comes from the culture of MARC itself which I'll
> rant about some other time (and have in the past), so I'll try to stick to the
> pure XML part of it."
Weinheimer Jim <j.weinheimer_at_aur.edu> wrote:
> This isn't entirely true. 245$a means "title proper," which is a technical
> term that catalogers use. You can find the guidelines for it in the ISBD
> at 1.1 Title Proper:
> http://www.ifla.org/files/cataloguing/isbd/isbd-cons_2007-en.pdf#page=37
I love your rebuke; it's one of those instances where the layman gets
corrected by the expert in something the layman neither needs nor
cares about and writes extensively on why it is wrong to assume we
need that degree of specificry. I think there is a word for that. :)
However, it's a bit disturbing to be told that that's not entirely
true given I took the terms and definitions from the horse's mouth
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/bd245.html), where MARC21 would
be a given, which states "title statement" for 245 and "title" for
subfield "a". So if you can't even trust loc.gov official MARC
documentation without being corrected by a cataloger / librarian, how
on EARTH do you guys think the rest of the world, me and my laypeople,
will even bother trying to keep up with this madness?
Btw, the point of my post at that point wasn't to dig into the
specifics of that field, but point to the morbid lack of container
mentality found in MARC. And that in itself is odd given the rich
model it is based on, but then understandable given its age and lack
of development with the ages.
I should also decree that my post was more on MARCXML than MARC
itself, so maybe I gave off the wrong impression that I was generally
harping on MARC again when I was specifically harping on the XML
version.
> So, in contrast to the others on this list who say that ISBD is a problem, I
> will say that the library world in very lucky in this respect because of the
> tremendous work done by our predecessors to create truly international
> standards based on the ISBD. Are they followed perfectly by everybody?
> Of course not.
I'd say you've got bigger problems than that. What gives; MARC rules
and definitions, AACR2 rules and definitions, ISBD rules and
definitions. Any more? I know lots of countries have their own
additions, subtractions and completely new ones as well, some minted
on MARC or any other rule set they thought were up to snuff. Surely
this in itself must be seen as a problem? (Not the rules themselves,
but the way they're spread out, not validated, not merged, not easily
accessible, not easily understood)
> The non-specialist may justifiably ask why titles are treated in such a
> seemingly arcane manner, but then would get entangled in a myriad
> of intricacies, just as would happen if I would ask why a certain
> standard exists for roofing materials.
There's not that many sets of rules for roofing materials. There's
more sets of rules for roofing in general, but not for materials.
Maybe you meant the latter. Still doesn't compare, and maybe it's the
non-academic threshold that keeps the material to a mortal level. My
brother is a roofer. :)
> I expect to get tomatoes hurled at me for pointing this out
And deservedly so. Surely when someone points out the insanity and
complexity with the culture of MARC the right thing to do is not to
point out more madness and complexity?
> So, perhaps this reason is no longer justified, but there are still
> plenty of other important reasons for retaining the title proper so
> it should certainly be retained.
Because you say so? :)
> This is why I say that specialist catalogers must be involved in
> these matters.
It's no longer that we need to involve the specialist catalogers in
these matters; they need to involve themselves if these matters are
important. No one will actively involve and embrace costly people
where computers are taking over, it's a dead duck, a dead race, even
if it is wrong and evil and tragic. The only way to add the value of
those specialists back into the loop is by putting them right in the
design of our next gen tools. Get them out of the cellars and into the
IT section, pronto!
> We can't expect programmers to undertake a deep study of
> these bibliographic intricacies, just as I mentioned in an
> earlier post that a specialist cataloger can only become at
> best a semi-competent programmer.
Umm, of course we won't expect them to do so; what's the point? What
is the importance of these bibliographic intricacies, especially in
lieu of smarter software with full-text access? Sorry to be a
pessimist in these matters, but speaking as someone who works with AI,
semantic technology, full-text knowledge management and massive
recursive key-value distributed stores on a daily basis, you guys
don't stand a chance if you think that textual analysis is so
complicated you've got a job for life.
You have to realize that the reason you posses (a word more fitting
than I planned) your specialist knowledge is because you're part of a
community that created a system for finding stuff when all you had
were bits of paper in a filing-cabinet. The world of finding stuff is
turned upside down and inside out, and unless you sit down and try to
work out what you've got that is truly valuable in the new world (a
proper title for a blog post that carries quotations from an online
article that's different from the print version, where the blogger
rambles a bit in the title?), that new world will race past you, your
knowledge will be lost, and if there was any value to be found, it
will get forgotten and overlooked.
> While I believe things need to change and simplify (which is not the direction
> of RDA, IMHO) it must be done with a clear understanding of what we have
> now, what could be gained and what would be lost.
Agree 100%.
> This is beyond the abilities of any one person or even one community of
> specialists. There is nothing wrong with this; it is just the way the world works.
Agree 30%.
Of course a community of specialists can get together and form a
marvelous foundation upon which the future can carry on. It's happened
many times, and it will happen again. Heck, even an individual can
sometimes break down walls and change the future for the better.
Get crackin'!
Regards,
Alex
--
Project Wrangler, SOA, Information Alchemist, UX, RESTafarian, Topic Maps
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Received on Wed Apr 21 2010 - 04:30:21 EDT