On 12/5/2011 1:40 PM, Karen Coyle wrote:
>
> This brings up another point that I haven't fully grokked yet: the use
> of MARC kept library data "consistent" across the many thousands of
> libraries that had MARC-based systems.

Well, only somewhat consistent, but, yeah.

> What happens if we move to RDF without a standard? Can we rely on
> linking to provide interoperability without that rigid consistency of
> data models?

Definitely not. I think this is a real issue. There is no magic to
"linking" or RDF that provides interoperability for free; it's all about
the vocabularies/schemata -- whether in MARC or in anything else.
(Note different national/regional library communities used different
schemata in MARC, which made interoperability infeasible there. Some
still do, although gradually people have moved to Marc21 precisely for
this reason, even when Marc21 was less powerful than the MARC variant
they started with).

That is to say, if we just used MARC's own implicit vocabularies, but
output them as RDF, sure, we'd still have consistency, although we
wouldn't really _gain_ much. On the other hand, if we switch to a new
better vocabulary -- we've got to actually switch to a new better
vocabulary. If it's just "whatever anyone wants to use", we've made it
VERY difficult to share data, which is something pretty darn important
to us.

Of course, the goal of the RDA process (or one of em) was to create a
new schema for us to consistently use. That's the library community
effort to maintain a common schema that is more powerful and flexible
than MARC. If people are using other things instead, apparently that
failed, or at least has not yet succeeded.