Dear Diane

just few words to say that I have found and still find the work of the DCMI/RDA Task Group excellent.  

Do not underestimate the type of change that is going on in cataloguing standards. It is a really huge paradigm shift. I hope not to demotivate, upset or even cause more worrying to anybody if I say that the type of vocabularies' control we had (or perceived as it was in place) in the past is gone and I am afraid it will not be back anymore because we are heading towards more diversified commercial uses of catalogs in digital environments. 

What it is important from my point of view is that the quality of cataloguing work still remain up to high level standards. 

That seems to me requiring vocabularies, registries mapping and crosswalks among metadata but above all clear design of fundamental simple structures with a purpose, an organisational context and a sustainable way to manage them in the long term. 

Discussions going on here (RDA-L more than DC-RDA list)  are very important as without "peopleware" nothing is possible in this sector.  Discussions about RDA/MARC and RDA versus other standards confirm to me that implementing new standards require first of all a vision of the final product we want to offer, to be broken down at a level of granularity strictly necessary not to compromise further developments. Obviously the knowledge of the rules and their history is important and if you know how the soviet union  considered territorial authorities in their cataloguing rules or the secrets of MARC code 100 $q you may be more creative and smart. But is also true that unless we look at the rules from the perspective of a newly designed product or service expertise can be really useless. 

So, let's bygone be bygone  :) 

Brunella Longo 



On 16 Feb 2011, at 22:32, Diane I. Hillmann wrote:

Realized belatedly that this conversation might better be happening on other lists.

Diane

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Re: [Re: ] RDA and MARC
Date: 	Wed, 16 Feb 2011 14:26:18 -0500
From: 	Diane I. Hillmann <[log in to unmask]>
To: 	MARC <[log in to unmask]>
CC: 	Bernhard Eversberg <[log in to unmask]>



Bernhard,

A little history here.  When the DCMI/RDA Task Group was formed in May
of 2007, it was with the idea that the work could be supported
financially by other entities, not the RDA co-publishers (who did, in
fact, support that London meeting where everything started).  In fact we
did have some early funding from the British Library and Siderean
Software, which helped get us started but in reality did not go far
enough.  You may recall that in 2008 the financial meltdown hit
everyone, and those of us engaged in doing the work, primarily four
people: Gordon Dunsire (the co-chair with me of the TG), Karen Coyle,
Jon Phipps and I (with some early help from Alistair Miles) decided that
we'd rather spend our time doing the work ourselves than continuing to
try and raise funding in that climate.

Frankly, the work involved is not something that can be done without a
fair amount of background and experience in some fairly esoteric areas.
(Read our article in DLib Magazine for more evidence of what was
involved: http://dlib.org/dlib/january10/hillmann/01hillmann.html).
This 'volunteer' aspect of the building of the vocabularies has been
firmly determined by us to end when the work is 'done' (completed to the
extent that RDA is), reviewed by whoever the JSC determines should do
the reviewing (still an open question, I'm afraid), and 'published'
(e.g., the status in the registry changed from 'new-proposed' to
'published').  That said, there is a proposal on the table with ALA
Publishing that they contract with us for the maintenance of the
vocabularies and any work needed to integrate the vocabularies with the
Toolkit and enable further translations of the vocabularies in the Open
Metadata Registry (such as has already started with the DNB).  None of
the integration steps would affect the open nature of the vocabularies
at all, just make for a more rational maintenance regime and limit any
synchronization issues.

I'm just as frustrated as you are (maybe more, given the state of limbo
in which the vocabularies seem to be at the moment), but all I can say
is that the four of us are pushing as hard as we can, and maybe y'all
could spend more of your energies pushing at the entities who seem to be
happy with the status quo instead of at us.  We are not, as some would
have it, a group of consultants trying to make money on this effort. If
we were, we'd have to honestly say we have failed miserably.  I'd like
to think that we've done something substantial and important with this
opportunity, and in the process demonstrated that it's not just the big
guys with the money who can make change happen.

Diane Hillmann
Co-chair, DCMI/RDA TG

On 2/16/11 4:07 AM, Bernhard Eversberg wrote:
15.02.2011 21:02, Mitch Turitz:
Karen,

  >   ...
I also think that although you are selflessly devoting your valuable
time to this unfunded mandate, you should request $ from the JSC and
other institutions to support this work.
It is unsatisfactory that anyone should be doing unpaid work on these
matters while the textual body of RDA is not freely available as open
source.
If the business model is to be a commercial one, then let ALA
Publishing do *all* the work related to RDA and bring a complete product
to the market that can be used out of the box and is demonstrably better
than what we have now.
It is even more annoying that in this forum and others there's much
guesswork and speculation being done on numerous questions which
could be answered easily by those in charge of RDA. Are these the
new commandments sent down from the mountain, and now it is our
part to volunteer in doing all the exegesis?

B.Eversberg