Neil Godfrey wrote:
> Is it reasonable to hope that RDA and SWAP will point to the most 
> rational ways to work with these complexities?
Having spent some time developing a base-line repository, and a fair 
amount of time thinking about how repositories interact with both users 
and each other, I (personally) can't see how SWAP (with DC, RDA, or RDF) 
is going to work **given the current technologies**

In my view, the current repository technologies are a librarians tool: 
taking in an artifact (eg a post-print article), adding catalog 
metadata, and making that information centrally available.

The idea is certainly laudable: reducing the barriers to information 
should accelerate progress in research.

The problem is that the technology does not make it easy for a 
non-librarian to add complete records to the corpus, nor is the 
technology particularly apt at disseminating/promoting items within the 
corpus.

Some simple examples of areas I see as problems:
1) There is no consistent subject classification (heck, a significant 
number of UK repositories dispense with Subject Classification all together)
2) There is no consistent naming for authors (I have seen the same 
author spelt three different ways in one repository)
3) Depositing is slow & tedious, with depositors faced with an 
uncomfortable number of input boxes on their screen.
4) Deposit is based around the Manifestation (in FRBR-Speak), so the 
whole Work ->+ Expression ->+ Manifestation heirachy is missing from the 
outset.
5) Dissemination is purely passive: OAI-PMH harvesting into other 
repositories & static harvesting by search engines.

There are ideas out there that address some of these issues, however 
none have come to the fore yet as we seem to focus on torturing the 
current technology into doing what we thing we want rather than wiping 
the slate clean and starting again..

(just my 2c :chuckle: )

-- 

Ian Stuart.
Bibliographics and Multimedia Service Delivery team,
EDINA,
The University of Edinburgh.

http://edina.ac.uk/

The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.