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Folks: Apologies, but the images I inserted into this message were stripped out somewhere along the line. The version below has links instead. Diane -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [DC-RDA] Happy New Year: Three new RDA Vocabularies registered Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2009 17:16:19 -0500 From: Diane I. Hillmann <[log in to unmask]> Reply-To: List for discussion on Resource Description and Access (RDA) <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] Folks: Three new and important vocabularies from RDA have been registered: RDA Content Type: http://metadataregistry.org/vocabulary/show/id/45.html RDA Carrier Type: http://metadataregistry.org/vocabulary/show/id/46.html RDA Media Type: http://metadataregistry.org/vocabulary/show/id/37.html I think it's interesting to point out how different these vocabularies are, both in their structure and how they're represented in the RDA text. Content type is from Chapter 6, and is presented as a relatively flat vocabulary (e.g., no hierarchy) and includes definitions and scope notes. You can take a look at "cartographic dataset" to see how the simple table in the text can be translated into a much richer and more useful form: http://metadataregistry.org/concept/show/id/510.html <http://metadataregistry.org/concept/show/id/510.html> Simply by separating the definition from the scope note and providing simple thesaural relationships from those notes, we have something much more functional. Interestingly, the Registry makes all those relationships reciprocal, so there are gaps in the vocabulary simply because the textual underpinning for the relationships only goes in one direction. For example, looking at the image above, there is a scope note that explains the relationship to "cartographic image" but in the listing for "cartographic image" there is only a related term, with no explanation of why the relationship exists. Ideally, there should be something there for human use (machines don't particularly care). In contrast, the RDA Carrier Type vocabulary, located in Chapter 3, is a two level hierarchy, with the top concepts seemingly intended as gathering devices, not for application in data. In the text, these terms lack definitions, and what little disambiguation we have comes from the organization (the gathering category) and a few footnotes, which are really scope notes. Below is one of the "top concept" gathering terms, with its narrower relationships specified: http://metadataregistry.org/concept/show/id/533.html In this vocabulary, the footnotes have been converted to scope notes, but for now the obvious alternate terms, even those that relate to the scope note itself, have not been entered. Below is the term "audio roll" and the scope note converted from a footnote. The note suggests that an obvious alternative term for audio roll would be "piano roll." http://metadataregistry.org/concept/show/id/538.html The RDA Media Type vocabulary is very short and non-hierarchical, and correlates to the gathering categories of the carrier types (which suggests to me that perhaps they ought not to be all that separate). Like the content types, these come with definitions and (sometimes) scope notes: http://metadataregistry.org/concept/show/id/475.html All of these vocabularies are up to date as of the Oct. 31, 2008 text available in the constituency review documents. I should note that as usual when I do wholesale vocabulary registration, I uncover a few bugs here and there, and you might see a few funky places where the status is "published" instead of "new-proposed" and the language is something you've never heard of--I will be going through and fixing those within the next couple of days so they should be corrected shortly. I'll also be writing up the problem so that Jon, the put-upon registry developer, can at least add them to his bug list (I'll have to wrestle with them a bit more until they're fixed, for a number of reasons). One of the questions I've been posing to all and sundry about all this is that of the usability of the vocabularies without definitions. My contention is that they're better than nothing, but won't lead to the consistency we're looking for without definitions, scope notes, and alternative terms. Karen Coyle and I were messing around with this idea sometime (maybe a year?) ago, and came up with an addition to the carrier type vocabulary that illustrated what it could look like (it's in the Registry Sandbox): http://sandbox.metadataregistry.org/concept/show/id/517.html <http://sandbox.metadataregistry.org/concept/show/id/517.html.> I do think that looking at something fully fleshed out serves to illustrate nicely the paucity of the current Carrier Type vocabulary. The other question is how these vocabularies should be enhanced and extended. Shortly (we hope) the Registry team will announce some enhanced functionality that will add the ability for interested parties to discuss enhancements, at the concept or term level, in ways that can lead to some consensus based proposals for missing pieces or extensions. Unfortunately the RDA text gives instructions that limit the other kinds of "bottom up" options to determine from usage where the vocabularies need to be extended. The instructions for when no current term from the vocabularies are available come straight from MARC-- one gets to use "other" or in some cases, "unspecified." Wouldn't it make more sense to allow catalogers to fill in what they think it should be, as free text, so that the data could be mined on a regular basis to see what the needs are in the community? Even errors, where there IS a term but the cataloger didn't recognize that the chosen text term should have been something else, helps establish the kinds of alternative labels that help the next person down the road. "Other" and "Unspecified" are dead ends and should be unceremoniously rejected (they will not--repeat NOT--be added to the vocabularies while I have breath). Well, enough for this New Year's Day. I look forward to some comments and suggestions ... Regards, Diane ********************************* Diane I. Hillmann Director of Metadata Initiatives Information Institute of Syracuse Partner, Metadata Management Associates Website: http://managemetadata.org Email: [log in to unmask] Voice: (607) 387-9207 Fax: (607) 387-4867 Skype: dihillmann *********************************