Am 21.12.2010 13:20, schrieb Weinheimer Jim:
>
> Concerning RDA and FRBR, even though they don't really change
> anything substantial, it's true that they may turn out to be the
> best librarian tools out there.
>
> Unfortunately, I find that a really depressing thought. There's
> absolutely *got* to be something better!
>
Trouble is, we are not looking, in bafflement, at a car or whatever
else of a compact nature, a self-contained "something" that needs to be
fixed or replaced.
It is a whole infrastructure that seems to be in need of a complete
overhaul, like electrical power systems of large countries. The
utilities need to play along with the manufacturers of appliances and
the distributors and vendors. And then this infrastructure needs to
blend into other infrastructures and customer expectations, and be
compliant with their standards. These standards, however, either don't
exist, or may change overnight, or evolve with no regard to ours, and
their data is inconsistent and makeshift and incompatible among each
other, and we cannot even get publishers on board, not to speak of
"other communities". It is, IOW, not just our stuff that needs to be
modernized or mobilized. The entire knowledge data economy is in ugly
shape, and no one sector of it can define progress and lead the way.
Libraries, however, encounter great obstacles when trying to make minor
MARC modifications.
So, taking all of this into account, meanwhile I doubt there's anything
out there. Looking as we are at a grounded Dreamliner, screwdrivers in
hand. I believe that full-text search is the factor to throw our
catalogs into disregard and obsolescence, but full-text search, by its
nature, has no way to do WEMI and FRBR. But it has some ways to find
stuff that leave catalogs hopelessly behind.
B.Eversberg
Received on Tue Dec 21 2010 - 09:21:48 EST