Hi,
As you may already noticed the Resource Description and Access (RDA)
cataloguing instructions will be published 2009. You can submit final
comments on the full draft until February 2nd:
http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/jsc/rda.html
http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/jsc/rdafulldraft.html
Although there are several details you can argue about (and despite the
questions whether detailed cataloguing rules have a future at all when
people do cataloguing in LibraryThing, BibSonomy etc. without rules) I
think that RDA is a step in the right direction. But there are some
serious problems with the publication of RDA that should be of your
interest:
1.) the standard is scattered in a set of PDF files instead of clean web
based HTML (compare with the W3C recommendations). You cannot easily
browse and search in RDA with your browser and a public search engine of
your choice. You cannot link to a specific paragraph to cite RDA in a
weblog positing etc. This shows me that the authors are still bound in
physical world of dusty books instead of the digital age.
2.) RDA is not going to be published freely available on the web at all!
See http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/jsc/rdafaq.html#7 Another reason
why you won't be able to refer to specific sections of RDA. Defining a
standard without putting in on Open Access (ideally under a specific
CC-license) is retrogressive practise and a good strategy to make people
ignored, misinterprete and violated it (you could also argue ethically
that its a shame for every librarian not putting his publications under
Open Access but the argument of quality should be enough).
3.) There are no official URIs for the elements of RDA. It looks like
there has been no progress compared to FRBR (IFLA failed to publish an
official RDF encoding of FRBR so several people created their own
vocabularies). To encode bibliographic data on the Semantic web you need
URIs for classes and properties. I don't expect RDA to get published as
a full ontology but at least you could determine the basic concepts and
elements and provide common URIs that people can build on. There are
several attempts to create ontologies for bibliographic data but most of
them come from outside the professional library community. Without
connection to the Semantic Web RDA will be irrelevant outside the
library world. With official URIs people can build on RDA and create a
common ontology of it. Deirdre Kiorgaard did a good job in collecting
elements [1] and Eversberg provides a database to start with.
What do you think about my concerns? We should try to get the JSC to
make RDA Open Access, prepared for use in the Web and even prepared for
the Semantic Web. This should not be too difficult - the main work is
convincing people (ok, it may be difficult to convince people ;-). I'd
be glad if you send your comments to the Joint Steering Committee for
Development of RDA until February 2nd:
http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/jsc/rdadraftcomments.html
It would be a pitty if RDA is an irrelevant anachronism from the
beginning just because it is not published the way standards need to be
published on the Web.
Greetings
Jakob Voss
[1] http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/jsc/docs/5rda-elementanalysisrev.pdf
[2] A helpful tool for structured temporary access to RDA is provided by
Bernhard Eversberg at http://www.biblio.tu-bs.de/db/wtr/detail.php -
this is what should be provided officially!
--
Jakob Voß <[log in to unmask]>, skype: nichtich
Verbundzentrale des GBV (VZG) / Common Library Network
Platz der Goettinger Sieben 1, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
+49 (0)551 39-10242, http://www.gbv.de
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