Well, there's the project by Alistair Miles that Karen alluded to earlier:

http://code.google.com/p/code4rda

The goals of this project are, in my mind, crucial in moving forward,
since it's taking our existing corpus of records and turning them into
RDA/RDF.  Not only is it a good proof of concept to show how these new
data models would look and work (esp. how they would work w/r/t to
current applications/workflows), but, more importantly, it shows it
can be done *with our current data* alleviating the need for some
unrealistic retrospective recataloging effort.

I guess the way I look at it is, there's still time to fix this, at
least technologically.  There is a difference between the standard,
the data model and the application.

Karen posted a couple of weeks back that UKMARC didn't include
punctuation, instead leaving it to technology to add it.  This doesn't
mean they didn't follow AACR2, they just didn't encode it into the
data fields, explicitly.  Of course, they gave this up when they
adopted MARC21.

Anyway, there's a separation of concerns that is currently being
blurred, but doesn't have to be in practice.

-Ross.

On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 2:25 PM, Anna Headley <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> But the first one to take this on has no one to grab from.  The sharing
> argument may be a red herring in that the problem, from some perspectives,
> isn't so much about sharing one's own work -- it's more about using others'
> work.  Or is there already a community of people doing something like what
> Ross describes?  If so, where can I find out more about who, and how this
> works?
>
> It seems to me that the best movements forward in this opening of data are
> centered on translating marc into more web-usable forms.  Which is
> great**... for everyone except catalogers with no love for marc.  Jakob
> makes a good point in the post that Rob pointed out
> ([log in to unmask]).." target="_blank">http:[log in to unmask])... when
> cataloging can look like librarything, the rules *and, I would add, tools*
> we use seem incredibly bloated.
>
> ** I do mean great.  We have to start somewhere.  It's just that the
> cataloging pieces move so excruciatingly slowly.
>
> ah
>
>
>
>
> Ross Singer wrote:
>>
>> It's not off-topic, at least I don't think so.
>>
>> And I don't think anybody is asking to give up on catalogers.  Just
>> like I don't think anybody would want the technologists to describe
>> the materials, I think the problem is that the catalogers tried to
>> apply their idea of a data model into tangible technology.
>>
>> Actually, I think the resource sharing argument is red herring.  A
>> shift to resource-centricity (vs. record-centricity) just means you
>> when you grab a new 'manifestation' for your local catalog, you may
>> also have to grab the creator, the publisher, the series, the
>> expression, the work, the subjects, etc.  All of these can be bundled
>> in the same xml document, though -- really it's just a different way
>> of looking at the data, but it's not a radical departure in the
>> delivery/discovery.
>>
>> -Ross.
>>
>> On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 1:44 PM, Anna Headley <[log in to unmask]>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> And what you hear over here is a plea to not give up on catalogers.  Some
>>> are beyond ready to move from text to data.  Hiding the data view -- do
>>> you
>>> mean making it look like marc? -- sounds pretty awful.  Catalogers who
>>> are
>>> on board are trapped by the way sharing currently works, i.e. record
>>> sharing.  If the leaders of the cataloging community are failing, what
>>> can
>>> catalogers do?  This is an honest question, not a throwing-up-of-hands.
>>>  Though maybe completely off-topic for this list.
>>>
>>> ah
>>>
>>>
>>> Karen Coyle wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Absolutely. The catalogers are still creating a textual document, not
>>>> data. At best you can mark up the text, as we do with the MARC record. I
>>>> worry that we won't be able to mesh the cataloger's view with a data
>>>> view --
>>>> that the two are some how inherently opposed. I'd like to start modeling
>>>> a
>>>> new data format but I can't imagine how we can bridge the gap between
>>>> the
>>>> catalogers and the system view. I suppose a very clever interface could
>>>> hide
>>>> the data view from the catalogers, but starting from either AACR2 or RDA
>>>> and
>>>> trying to get there feels extremely difficult. I guess my fear is that
>>>> it
>>>> will require compromises, and those will be hard to negotiate.
>>>>
>>>> kc
>>>>
>>>> p.s. The RDA element analysis is at
>>>>
>>>> http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/jsc/docs/5rda-elementanalysisrev2.pdf.
>>>> That was the input to the registry.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Anna Headley
>>> Swarthmore College Library
>>> 610.690.5781
>>> [log in to unmask]
>>>
>>>
>
> --
> Anna Headley
> Swarthmore College Library
> 610.690.5781
> [log in to unmask]
>