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DC-GENERAL  October 2006

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Subject:

RDA Special Session - notes

From:

"Clayphan, Robina" <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Clayphan, Robina

Date:

Fri, 13 Oct 2006 16:13:48 +0100

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (148 lines)

*******************Apologies for cross-posting********************

Dear Colleagues,

We had an interesting session discussing issues around the development
of Resource Description and Access (RDA) at the DC-2006 conference last
week.  The meeting notes below will be taken as feedback to the RDA
developers at the JSC meeting on Friday next week by Diane Hillmann. We
would be pleased receive further comment from the wider DC General list.
Apologies for the short timescales but please could you send comments by
next Wednesday (18th).  I have also put this as a Word document in the
file area of the DC-Libraries list.

Regards,
Robina

*****************************
Report of the RDA Special Session at DC2006 (Wednesday, 4th October
2006)

The session was introduced by DC-Libraries Working Group chair Robina
Clayphan (British Library). She emphasized that the RDA development aims
to widen the range of user communities using the content standard. To
accomplish this, RDA must be more easily applicable to a wider range of
resource types than traditional printed materials.

The objective of this session is to provide feedback to the RDA
developers from the perspective of the Dublin Core community.  Diane
Hillmann is the Dublin Core liaison to the ALA Committee on Cataloging:
Description and Access (CC:DA) and will take the feedback to that group
and beyond where appropriate. 

Presentation by Diane Hillmann

Diane's presentation described a short history of the RDA and its
relationship with its antecedents, as well as the current process of RDA
development. She outlined for the group the current issues that she felt
were most important from the point of view of prospective use of the RDA
for Dublin Core metadata. These issues can be summarized as follows:

1.	The lack of an explicit model (aside from FRBR) and general
principles for RDA from which specific guidance could grow
2.	The legacy of transcription and RDA's continuing reliance on
transcription as identification, to the exclusion of other, more machine
parseable methods of identification
3.	Problems with RDA's use and typology of relationships 
4.	 Continuing reliance on conventions of "primary" and "secondary"
information left over from catalog cards

Diane also discussed the recent statement of concern with the
development process submitted to the Joint Steering Committee by CC:DA.
The statement reflected a lack of confidence in how RDA is progressing
and the ability of the current process to bring about the kind of
standard needed.

In a comment, Robina pointed to the example of the developing eprints
application profile, which uses a combination of FRBR and the Dublin
Core Abstract Model (DCAM).  This AP represents a clear case for a
scheme being built on a data model to ensure wider interoperability.

Presentation by Mikael Nilsson 

Mikael expressed support for Diane's observations, though he admits he
does not have deep knowledge of the library cataloging domain, but
rather comes at the issues based on familiarity with real world,
non-library scenarios in applications.  He began by asking a series of
questions:

What's a resource? Some examples might be: book, person, publisher,
location, event.  Most current formats lump them together in a
description, but DC has a 1:1 principle. This "one resource, one
description" is an inherent part of the DC Abstract Model, and was part
of Dublin Core from its beginnings.  Clearly, RDA needs a good data
model to proceed.

What do we mean by "Description?" We should begin by determining who RDA
is for?  Is it for librarians, implementers, content producers
(teachers, students, etc.)? Mikael described a paper he wrote a paper
with some common misconceptions about metadata: objective, produced once
and never added to, just labeled text or indexing. Amazon and other
successful applications exploit data from many sources.  The Semantic
Web embraces many hands in descriptions over time.

Do we need more than one specification? Mikael believes that monolithic
specifications are doomed to failure: they take too long to produce and
do not take into account needs of different domains. DC has many
specifications and seems sometimes slightly chaotic, but it moves
swiftly in contrast to IEEE/LOM.

Mikael suggested that RDA might best produce just the data model and
first principles to begin, publish those and then work on the balance.
He supported the notion of application profiles in this context, but
pointed out that APs need a framework to be specializable.

Discussion

Comments in support of the CC:DA recommendations by Marty Kurth
emphasized the importance of a top-down approach and better
understanding of what we're describing. He noted that an example of an
advantage of this approach might be that publisher information would no
longer be buried.

Robina pointed out that an objective of the session is to produce a
feedback for Diane to take back to the JSC meeting as coming from the DC
community.  She summarized two themes coming out of the presentations
and discussion: the importance of a good model including a "one-to-one"
concept, and the need for firm definitions of entities and relationships
as a basis for RDA development.

Diane pointed out that much of the opposition to a "one-to-one" approach
came from those focused on immediate problems displaying related
information in current systems, and that future practices cannot be
driven by current system shortcomings.

Corey Harper emphasized that newer models re-using entity descriptions
via referencing is far more efficient than our former text-based
approach. Robina concurred and felt that another theme of our consensus
would be support of a machine friendly, machine processable approach.
Mikael agreed that machine oriented should be emphasized, to get away
from stenography!

Notes by Eric Childress; editing by Robina Clayphan and Diane Hillmann

--------------------------------------
Robina Clayphan
Bibliographic and Metadata Standards
The British Library
Boston Spa, Wetherby
West Yorkshire LS23 7BQ UK
Tel: +44 (0)1937 546969
Fax: +44(0)1937 546586
--------------------------------------

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