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