Anyone know of any good existing controlled vocabulary for 'format' or 
'carrier' for multimedia materials?  I'm thinking of things like "CD", 
"DVD", "digital", etc.

The closest I can get is from RDA at 
http://metadataregistry.org/concept/list/vocabulary_id/46.html (thanks 
Karen and Diane), but it seems _really_ insufficient. As far as I can 
tell "audio disc" is used for both a CD and a vinyl disc, and there's 
nothing available there for "DVD" at all.   Or for "digital". Although 
I'm not sure what I mean by "digital", I guess CD and DVD are both 
digital, but I was thinking of something to identify a digital file on a 
computer network free of particular carrier. I guess that wouldn't be in 
a carrier vocabulary at all, after all, that would be sort of a null 
carrier. Phew, this stuff does get complicated quick. Which I guess is 
why nobody's worked out a good one yet.

Too bad RDA's is so _far_ from good though. Any others anyone knows about?

Jonathan

-- 
Jonathan Rochkind
Digital Services Software Engineer
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886 
rochkind (at) jhu.edu