On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 1:30 PM, John Attig <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>
> First, it must be admitted that there are a lot of RDA instructions that
> specify recording of a particular term, but don't formally specify a
> vocabulary.  You might consider these a partial vocabulary: some terms are
> specified, but everything else is uncontrolled.  We recognize that this
> isn't ideal, but it isn't always possible to specify a full vocabulary.
> Consider this a work in progress.

We're *all* a work in progress ;-). Actually, I think that it is
inevitable that we will end up with a "partially controlled" solution,
since there will always be exceptions. The task at hand is to figure
out a way to manage that in a way that systems can take advantage of
the controlled portions but not be thrown by the uncontrolled one.

>
> Second, color was a particularly telling example to cite.  In some ways, I
> think the JSC may have handled this incorrectly, but we needed a practical
> solution that would work with current technology.  The problem was
> political.  An earlier version of the proposal for the Colour Content
> element (7.17) instructed catalogers to record "colour" if the item
> contained colour content.  This generated screams of protest from all the
> catalogers in the United States who considered that this required them to
> misspell the word ("two nations divided by a common language ...").  So the
> JSC decided that this element would not have a controlled vocabulary and
> that the presence of colour could be recorded using "an appropriate term"
> but not specifying what term or spelling.  As I said, I'm not sure that this
> was the correct decision, particularly given that RDA specifies what term to
> record not what term to display.  I hope that we will have systems
> eventually that can display "color" to a U.S. user and "colour" to the rest
> of the world. Unfortunately, that feature isn't commonly available today and
> the issue had become so politically inflamed that we needed to do
> something.  Note also that MARC doesn't have to deal with this issue,
> because the lists above are for coded values; systems either display the
> codes or translate them to their preferred terms/spellings.

Should we work in an environment where we register vocabulary terms
and give them identifiers, the end result will be like the MARC codes
(although hopefully with additional capabilities) -- once identified,
the term can be displayed as the particular community desires. There
is already interest in providing translations of some of the
registered elements, and that will be an important testing ground for
the concept of identifying terms and allowing their display names to
be contextual.

>
> So, bottom line, our intention was that there not be a controlled vocabulary
> for this element, although some specific values are specified in individual
> instructions
>

This makes a lot of sense. There's no way that you can have a
controlled list of every color that might be used in a description. I
think we can develop a methodology where certain values ("b&w") are
controlled, but others are open to the cataloger's discretion.
Conceptually, this could translate to a basic rule: use what's there
if it works for your purposes, but extend if you have a need to.

kc


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Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
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