I won't comment on the points Robin and Gisle addressed so well.
[log in to unmask] wrote:
> This allows you to select role from an enumerated and easily expanded list
> - probably easier for software to deal with than having to recognize a new
> subelement for each new type of role.
The idea of an "easily expanded list" is one of those things that seems
great, but makes catalogers want to pull their hair out. Example:
We decide to delineate persons by their role(s), e.g. author, editor,
contributor, etc. This serves us well for a number of years, and
hundreds of thousands (or maybe millions) of records until another group
says they can't survive without, let's say, "presenter".
To make them happy, we go ahead and add "presenter" to the list.
What have we just done? We have made many of the previous records
obsolete, because when the catalogers/creators made them, it never even
entered their heads that there could be something such as "presenter." A
search by "presenter" necessarily gives an incorrect result.
How do we correct such a situation? By recataloging--a messy,
unsatisfying and unproductive business, and something that probably
could never happen in any sort of organized fashion on the web.
Catalogers correct records every day, but there are levels of
correction: changing the old "Moving pictures" to "Motion pictures" was
one thing (the changes could be made automatically for the most part)
but deciding that, "Oh, this person was actually a presenter" is a type
of correction that demands reexamination of the material. Such a
correction is on another level.
The reality of this situation would be: the earlier records would become
obsolete and unsearchable by a search for "presenter."
So, the idea of an "easily expanded list" sends shivers down my spine!
Jim Weinheimer
Princeton University
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