FW: [RDA-L] www.rdaonline.org

Christoph Schmidt-Supprian wrote:

<snip>
A very interesting project - and one I've told all my colleagues to watch. But as long as there are no detailed AACR2-type rules (so far only the various rule interpretations seem to be available), this is not a replacement for AACR2 or RDA. It strikes me that, at least so far, this site is rather an alternative to Cataloger's Desktop than to RDA. In other words, it's an aggregator of rule sets, not a replacement of any one set of rules.
</snip>

The Cooperative Cataloging Rules initiative is not designed as a replacement for anything. There are two separate parts to it.
First, it is a continuation of what we have been doing and second, a common meeting-ground with other metadata communities for discussion of bibliographical concepts.

1) The sections at: http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/library-of-congress-rule-interpretations and http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/isbd-areas
To use this site correctly, catalogers need to retain their copies of AACR2. Then, the rule interpretations from the Library of Congress, which your library, and any library, follows every time anyone accepts a record with 040 $aDLC$cDLC or from any other library that follows LC cataloging. These rule interpretations are now more widely available, and you can interact with them, through the CCR. AACR2 is under copyright. Therefore, you need to keep your copy of AACR2, while the supplementing rules (in many cases, rules that are far more readable, more understandable, and more useful) are available online for everyone.

The ISBD is available on the web to everyone and it serves as the basis for AACR2. Therefore, there are links into the ISBD because we can't put AACR2 online.

The CCR can provide new resources for catalogers, e.g. a page made by Becky Yoose on cataloging kits at: http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/kits. Even though it is still a work in progress, it is useful already, and for others in the Wiki, it can be built cooperatively.

RDA is intended to replace AACR2 and the LC Rule Interpretations and this will involve costs of retooling and retraining, plus subscription costs. The reason for the CCR initiative is that many libraries simply cannot do this since we are going through the terrible budget cuts, and my library is one of those. There can be no discussion about this. In addition, I have brought up very serious theoretical questions as to the correctness of the RDA/FRBR model, and that it is highly probable that this model is obsolete. So, it is not wise to spend lots of money and resources to make a better horse & buggy which will be ignored in our modern information society, at a time when we need to provide something genuinely useful for our public. What our public needs from information and how they interact with it is highly unclear because we are in a transitional moment, although much research is going on right now.

Therefore, I feel that options are absolutely necessary for libraries today. Cataloging rules need to continue to develop when work on AACR2 and the LCRIs ceases, and now the CCR will be able to continue to follow and develop the rules we already use. In this way, libraries have the simplest option to *continue doing what we have done* until there is some kind of clarity on how we should best prepare ourselves for the future and how best to spend our resources. For instance, it is a no-brainer that MARC21/ISO2709 format absolutely must change, and I believe it is only after some real experiments have been made in sharing our records with the public, how they accept them and what they do with them, that we can begin to decide how we should continue.

If this is a revolution, it is probably one of the most conservative revolutions I can imagine. While I think we can all agree that we desperately need basic, fundamental changes, in my opinion, RDA provides only cosmetic changes. As I have written in other posts, RDA does not attempt to solve the fundamental problems faced by libraries, catalogs, cataloging, or our users. While I have great respect and admiration for those in this effort, someone must take a stand at this highly important juncture and proclaim: This is the wrong road to choose. And thus the Cooperative Cataloging Rules.

This leads me to the second part of the CCR.

2) The sections at: http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/conceptual-outline and http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/cataloging-ru
To help determine what needs to be done, the CCR also attempts to bring different rules and practices together. If we are to cooperate with other metadata communities as everyone says we must, it cannot be a case of: everyone else can change everything they do to follow our rules, and then we can cooperate. Cooperation means change from everyone concerned, and that can only come from a common understanding of what everyone means, and what everyone does. Therefore, we must begin to understand the rules and practices of others, and the CCR attempts to provide this common meeting ground in an open and cooperative fashion.

This dual purpose may not be very clear in the CCR as it is now. During the Christmas break, I will try to redesign the main page to make this clearer.

Jim

James L. Weinheimer
Director of Library and Information Services
The American University of Rome
Rome, Italy

FW: Open Reply to Thomas Mann

Here is a message I posted to several lists. In it, I mention the Cooperative Cataloging Rules initiative.

To those interested, I have just made available another of my "open replies" to Thomas Mann's report (http://www.guild2910.org/Future%20of%20Cataloging/LCdistinctive.pdf) on the E-LIS database (once again) at: http://eprints.rclis.org/17331/
"An Open Reply to Thomas Mann's report 'What is Distinctive about the Library of Congress In Both its Collections and its Means of Access to Them ...'"

Regards,
James Weinheimer
Director of Library and Information Services
The American University of Rome
via Pietro Roselli, 4
00153 Rome, Italy

Re: [NGC4LIB] FRBR WEMI and identifiers

Jonathan Rochkind wrote:

<snip>
Ah, you're right. Current practices make it difficult or impossible to tell (in an automated fashion) whether a uniform title authority record represents a Work, an Expression, or a Manifestation, and exactly what 'headings' correspond to which as well.

Jim, does this help you at all see why _some_ change of our cataloging practices is required? What we do is just too ambiguous for the machine world.
</snip>

This question concerns me because I don't believe I am against changes in our cataloging--I think it's quite to the contrary. It's just that I don't think that RDA is a productive way of going about it. This colors the project I have initiated with the Cooperative Cataloging Rules, so I feel I must explain.

What do I think needs to be changed? Let's look at the same examples I gave before:

100 1_ |a Shakespeare, William, |d 1564-1616. |t Sonnets. |l German & English. |k Selections

The suggestions I have seen, and the project of subject headings at http://id.loc.gov/ does the same, is that this heading must be turned into a URI to be useful. I disagree since I don't think that even if this headings were turned into a URI, it would be very useful at all. What would be extemely useful however, is to link what can be linked, and there is an awful lot here: separate links to Shakespeare's authority record (an extremely rich source); to the Name/title record of the Sonnets; to the different German/English versions, and to different Selections. As a result, this single heading is extremely rich in linked data. So, this text-based string should be dismantled and linked wherever possible, and it is very possible here.

Therefore, the above heading would be (in very poor XML):

<uniformTitle>
<name>[link to Shakespeare's heading]</name>
<title>[link to record for the Sonnets]</title>
<language>[link from list of languages]</language>
<version>[link to record for selections]</version>
</uniformTitle>

Therefore, the above should all be separate links when it becomes very useful.

Let's examine the other heading I gave before:
130 _0 |a Bible. |p O.T. |p Genesis. |l Catalan. |s Clascar. |d 1914

Again, when viewed *not as a text string* but as an entire number of separate linked data, this is extremely rich. I can imagine in both cases, that the OPAC would present the user with different possibilites depending on where you clicked, using various onmouseovers to display the options. Someone would see the incredible NAF heading for the Bible, and would run the mouse over Genesis, and would get all kinds of links about the book of Genesis, going into the authority file, but it could be enriched with links into Wikipedia, into versions, into online webpages, and so on. With subjects, you could run your mouse over the main heading and get all the cross-references and scope notes immediately.

Now, from the point of view of *cataloging* i.e. what the actual work that the cataloger does, exactly what needs to change here? Are the rules for constructing the name heading for Shakespeare going to change? No, because they don't need to. How about for determining the title "Sonnets"? No. Or Selections? No. Any changes for the Bible heading? No. For individual books of the Bible? No. And this is what AACR2 and RDA deal with, not with coding.

Now, let's consider the |l in the Shakespeare heading. Here I could see a change in that |l could be made repeatable, thereby simplifying both the cataloger's and the user's tasks (no need to learn the order). From these simple examples, I think it's clear that our formats must change substantially, but the standards for cataloging do not, or not all that much. Still, I submit that deciding to "link what can be linked" would constitute a huge advance in the catalog and that our users would love it.

Do we need WEMI and RDA for this? I don't see why. First, I don't think that WEMI fits the world of information very well and to me, such an abstruse theoretical/philosophical argument is far less important at a moment when we should be concentrating on *linking wherever we can*. There are lots of places for links in all of our records, and so I see it as primarily a systems problem that can be implemented *right now.* Certainly the models that FRBR and WEMI present are at the least far too dubious for the library world to focus its diminishing resources on at this very difficult moment, as the "Study of the North American MARC Records Marketplace" makes very clear. (I'm still reading and considering it, by the way)

Ultimately, we may discover that changes in cataloging procedures are necessary or useful in some cases, e.g. the multiple languages in the uniform title I showed, but these types of changes will make themselves clear as experience is gained.

I hope this makes my own ideas clearer: I am not saying that the current situation should not change, I am saying that FRBR, WEMI and their RDA version do not provide the changes that either we or our users need. At the same time, there's a lot that can be done right now, if people are willing to open up their data for experimentation by the general information community.

Jim Weinheimer

Support for the Research Process: An Academic Library Manifesto

Here is a manifesto issued by the RLG Partnership Research Information Management Roadmap Working Group. It looks like there are some great ideas here. Each of their points are well considered, but I think these two merit special interest:

• Design flexible new services around those parts of the research process that cause researchers the most frustration and difficulty.
• Embed library content, services, and staff within researchers’ regular workflows; integrating with services others provide (whether on campus, at other universities, or by commercial entities) where such integration serves the needs of the researcher.

To accomplish these goals means a sea change in the library mind-set: creating tools that work in tandem with other tools our patrons need, instead of expecting everyone to learn the special ways of the library; and always keeping the needs of the user uppermost in mind. Libraries have always claimed to do just those things, but many of our patrons would disagree.

I would only add that there are additional needs that a library has for its internal purposes, but these should not overshadow the goals of this manifesto.

Give it a read!

Updates to the Wiki

We have added some additional links and a page to the Cooperative Cataloging Rules Wiki.

1. There are now links to cataloging rules for specific materials, i.e. Online Books Electronic Editions, Online Books Reproductions, and Cataloging Online Integrating Resources, all from Yale.
2. We have also added a new page Reports on the Practice of Cataloging, where we can place links to reports of special interest to the practice of cataloging in a modern environment. So far, we have just made primarily links to the major sites, but this can become much more specific.

Please think about joining and helping your colleagues!

New Post in NGC4LIB

I discussed some the Cooperative Cataloging Rules Wiki in the NGC4LIB email list. You can read it at https://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=NGC4LIB;Ml0AuQ;20091030150755%2B0100, and the copy on my own blog at http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/2009/10/fw-ngc4lib-tim-berners-lee-on-semantic.html

NGC4LIB

You may be interested to see the wide-ranging discussion on Cooperative Cataloging Rules, and related topics going on at NGC4LIB. Take a look at the topics: Cooperative Cataloging Rules Announcement, User tasks--outdated? Why?, and Tim Berners-Lee on the Semantic Web.

Re: [NGC4LIB] Cooperative Cataloging Rules Announcement

On Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:53:04 -0400, .. wrote:

>I have a question and a comment.
>
>You suggest that FRBR is obsolete, but that AACR2 is revisable. So, my
>question is: Why do you think a 31-year old standard, AACR2 (1978) can
>be updated, but not an 11-year old standard, FRBR (1998)?

Thanks for some good questions. I'll try to answer them:

FRBR is a theoretical framework, not a standard. It purports to define what
makes a bibliographic record functional, or not. FRBR states that for a
record to function, it must allow people to "find, identify, select, and
obtain" "works, expressions, manifestations and items." It was never tested
among the non-library community (that I know of) and what it says is
certainly highly dubious in today's world, which has new tools that were
completely unknown in the 1990s, e.g. pre-Google, pre-Web2.0. In my own
opinion, what FRBR actually does is to describe the library-centric view of
the information universe as it stood in the 1990s. (But I reiterate that I
am not finding fault with anyone. Nobody could have predicted the explosion
that has occurred) Also, and this is very important: the public likes the
new tools and prefers them to ours in many, many ways. Ever newer tools
appear every day and we are living through a time of tremendous creativity,
innovation and ferment in the information world. With the Google Books
project and the popularity of open access plus new projects, we undoubtedly
are in for even more change, e.g. see the latest in
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/18/AR2009101802360.html.
We may be looking at a time, perhaps very soon, a time period measured in
months instead of decades, when someone can get a bachelor's degree without
ever setting foot into a library. How much longer will it be before they can
get a master's, or PhD? I don't think too many people will maintain that it
can never happen and perhaps it will come much sooner than we can imagine
right now.

AACR2 is a well-established standard that has been continually updated both
with published revisions and the LCRIs, so it does not really date from
1978. Actually, it's FRBR that has not been updated. Although there is a
theoretical framework operating in the background, AACR2 itself is not
theoretical but a highly practical document, and does not talk about record
structure or anything like that; it tells you what information is important
and how to input it.

>Back in May, Tom Delsey, the editor of RDA, gave a presentation on
>AACR2/RDA at a CLA pre-conference. He stated that a lot of the content
>(of AACR2) hasn't changed. Rather the main change of RDA was structural
>(based on FRBR). Maybe retraining will be less cumbersome than we think
>if we emphasize the continuity of the two codes.

This is my understanding as well. Therefore, if things are changing so
little, and retraining will be minimal (essentially learning how to navigate
the reorganized rules and learning new rule numbers, which means that all
local documentation will have to change as well), it is natural to ask: why
do it at all? While our day-to-day work will definitely be disrupted and
made more expensive with online subscriptions, what difference will it make
to our users? Exactly what will someone be able to do with a record created
in RDA that they cannot do today? Will RDA make it easier to get
bibliographic records from other entities? Does RDA create anything that
people want and is worth the cost?

Library catalogs (and consequently, I submit, libraries themselves) are
facing very, very hard times indeed. Especially when there are free
alternatives out there that people like and prefer at the same time as we
are facing e ver-dwindling resources.

My library, and many others out there, simply cannot pay for retraining and
the subscriptions to the online RDA. It's that simple. Therefore, there is
no choice for these libraries: they absolutely cannot implement RDA. In
addition,
I personally have very strong theoretical objections as to its
ultimate value to our library users or to librarians in general. That's why
I looked around for a genuine choice and found the Cooperative Cataloging
Rules, which provides the choice for libraries who cannot, or prefer not to
implement RDA.

While we must change, it must be in new directions that promise cooperation
and high-standards, and we make must be relevant to our patrons. I think
there are many things we can do in this new world, and most ways are very
inexpensive, but major decisions have to be made, e.g. do I put my data on
the web for free in useful formats for free download and further use by the
world? I confess that I find this potentially disturbing, as Tim Berners-Lee
describes his view of things, where people will take your data and rework it
in all kinds of ways they like. Still, while I may find it disturbing, that
is just the price of admission to the world-of-information-as-it-is-becoming
(apologies to Kant!).

Does this answer your questions?

Jim Weinheimer

Official Announcement

Well, I've announced it. Here it is:

Everyone knows the information world has been changing in response to the revolution in information technology and it is changing at an ever increasing pace. Many of our patrons have discovered they prefer to use non-library tools to find, access, and use information in ways that could not have been imagined only 15 years ago. It seems natural to ask: What can be the role of library catalogs, and even of librarians themselves, in a future that is so difficult to predict and that threatens to leave them behind? Today it is amazing how quickly, easily, and inexpensively computers can generate cataloging information (or metadata); new, advanced algorithms attached to full-text searching have proven very popular with the general populace. While the power of these tools is undeniable, information experts can see quite clearly how these same tools can quietly hide information as well, but such arguments can be extremely subtle.

In the field of metadata creation, it would be futile to compete only in the areas of speed and quantity. Our advantages lie in the high quality and the standards of the metadata we create, but since our patrons are finding other tools highly useful and in many cases, prefer them to our own, we must reconsider very precisely what the terms "quality" and "standards" mean in today's environment; an environment that is truly shared and where our patrons can easily access materials that are completely outside a library's control. While we can agree that productivity must increase--and increase a lot--how can we ensure that quality and standards do not suffer? How can we take advantage of some of that metadata that is generated automatically, or the metadata created by other bibliographic communities, so that we can improve the final products of all of our work and give our patrons tools they really want and need?

Our new website attempts to find answers to some of these questions. The "Cooperative Cataloging Rules" is now available at http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/. We want to announce its existence and to put out a general request for professional metadata creators to participate. The site has two primary purposes: 1) to offer a serious alternative to RDA and 2) to offer a place for sharing bibliographic concepts within the general metadata community.

1) Alternative to RDA

Many in the library cataloging community have expressed serious reservations about the wisdom of implementing RDA. They feel that while it will cause upheavals in the day to day work of catalogers, RDA will not solve the truly serious problems facing the cataloging community. These issues have been discussed in many places, including the published literature and many library email lists. We will not attempt to summarize the arguments here, but will merely state that the adoption of RDA is highly controversial.

Add to this the serious budgetary problems almost all libraries are now facing, and it turns out the costs of retooling, retraining, rewriting local documentation, plus online subscriptions, make implementation of RDA beyond the abilities of many libraries, especially for an untested product.

Still, libraries have legitimate concerns. They fear the old rules will no longer be maintained and updated, therefore, they in essence have no choice except to adopt RDA because if they don't, they will remain forever stuck in the year 2009 (or 2010 or so, whenever RDA comes out).

This is where the "Cooperative Cataloging Rules" step in. It will build on the richness of the Library of Congress Rule Interpretations, which have been placed into a wiki for searching and further development. There are links into each rule of the International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD). We also have an international group of cataloging experts willing to become involved in this effort. It still needs the participation of many more cataloging experts.

Speaking for myself, I embark upon this course with great hesitation since I have tremendous respect and appreciation for my colleagues who have labored so diligently over the creation of RDA. Nevertheless, having said this I must also take a stand and say that my library is not in a position to implement RDA, and I know there are many other libraries out there in the same predicament. We cannot afford the costs of retraining, retooling, online subscriptions and other unforeseen costs that inevitably arise in a huge project such as this. While I believe that it is vitally important that traditional library cataloging adapt in answer to the changes in society and knowledge exchange, I have grave doubts whether RDA actually achieves this: does RDA provide either to libraries or to library patrons what they want and need? I think not, and many others share that opinion.

For these reasons, alternatives must be found and with the Cooperative Cataloging Rules, there is one. All that librarians need do is retain their current copies of AACR2, supplemented by the LCRIs, but now these excellent, tried-and-true rules can continue to develop in a genuinely cooperative, global manner.

In short, we are interested in giving libraries a real choice, plus we want to give concerned catalogers a voice in the future of our profession.

Since nothing like this has ever been attempted before, it is difficult to predict how it will develop. That it can work, I personally have no doubt, since we have examples of several successful open source projects before us. At this point, I foresee something similar to the development of the Linux operating system applied to library standards.

Whether it will work is another matter entirely but we can try our best.

In this part of the project, emphasis should be placed on practical matters. We should not get bogged down by major theoretical debates.

There is another place for that.

2) The Conceptual Outline

The second purpose of the The Cooperative Cataloging Rules is to try to establish a common conceptual ground with other metadata communities so that we can begin to understand one another. This is in anticipation of the time when different communities will genuinely share their metadata in a coherent fashion and perhaps in ways that we cannot imagine at this point in time. If we are serious about wanting to share information and cooperate, it cannot be a one-way street. While others need to understand libraries and library needs, we need to understand other communities and their needs. To take only one example, while superficially the same, the edition information in an ONIX record and edition information in a record following AACR2 can be quite different conceptually, leading to great confusion among all concerned. Add to this all of the newly appearing varieties of digital resources that are updated continually, with shared annotations, and the very idea of an edition becomes hard to pin down. If we wish to cooperate, it is vitally important that people try to understand one another. In the Cooperative Cataloging Rules, there is a place for such a discussion.

Before everyone can begin to work together, there needs to be an understanding of what others are doing, and this is especially important for those working at the practical, everyday level, not only for those at the top. This section of the Cooperative Cataloging Rules attempts to provide an area for the sharing and exchange of bibliographic concepts, with the emphasis on "cooperative." Currently, I have used the ISBD areas as the foundation for this conceptual framework, but this will probably change quickly.

Just as in the other section, it is impossible at this point in time to know how it will develop, or even if there will be any interest at all, although I suspect there will be. Yet, if the effort is never made, we will also never know if it could succeed. Although we want everyone to be able to see the site and link to it freely, at least at this point we want only professional catalogers and metadata creators to make changes to the pages, although we think anyone should be able to make comments.

This can also be a place to share other useful information. At the moment, I confess these are primarily links into my own creations. For example, I added a link to a page I made that I find indispensable, called “Latest Library News” which keeps me up to date on library concerns, and others may find it useful as well. There are links to specific cataloging guides. For example, I included the “Slavic Cataloging Manual,” that I created originally, gave to ACRL, and is now maintained at Indiana University. I have also made links to other manuals that I worked on at Princeton University, but I have added additional pages that have been useful to me, from the University of Buffalo on DVDs and Streaming Video. There is a link to J. McRee Elrod’s excellent Cataloguing Cheat Sheets, but of course there are many, many other wonderful guides as well and I hope that this site may even be an incentive to create new and innovative cataloging guides for sharing.

Since metadata has become such an important concern, a project of metadata standards being developed in an open manner seems inevitable sooner or later, and we feel it is important for librarians and catalogers to be involved as deeply as possible. Otherwise, all of these important developments will take place without us.

This project can only work with your help. Remember, this is not my project--I am only playing the role of initiator. Please consider participating! Go to http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/, click on "Join and Get Involved!" and follow the instructions.

And please be patient, especially at first, since this is a new initiative and bugs will have to be worked out.

James Weinheimer
Director of Library and Information Services
The American University of Rome
Rome, Italy

About the Cooperative Cataloging Wiki

The purpose of this blog is to provide information about the development of the Cooperative Cataloging Wiki.

First, why make the wiki?
With the difficult economic times we are experiencing, many libraries are facing serious financial problems and they will simply be unable to implement RDA due to the costs of subscribing to the online version of RDA, plus whatever retraining costs will be required. This will be on top of costs for changing computer systems and the necessary drop in productivity as people learn and become familiar with the new procedures. Other libraries will decide not to implement RDA for their own reasons. For those who decide, for whatever reason, not to implement RDA, they face the potential problem of following rules that will become obsolete. Without further development of AACR2, there is the fear that sooner or later adoption of RDA will be necessary anyway because those will be the only rules being updated. Therefore, it appears that libraries will have no choice.

The Cooperative Cataloging Wiki is designed to avoid this difficulty and provide libraries a genuine choice by allowing development of the cataloging rules in an open manner, similar to open projects such as Linux. (For an entertaining discussion of Open Source, you can see The cathedral and the bazaar by Eric Steven Raymond. There are different versions also)

Therefore, the wiki has information for all of the current cataloging manuals that are publicly available: all of the current Library of Congress Rule Interpretations are included in the wiki, there are links into the latest, consolidated International Standard for Bibliographic Description, plus links to the Canadian RIs, and other relevant documents. We have a number of concerned experts who are willing to lend some of their time and expertise to keep the rules current, plus you can participate as well, so that libraries will at least have a realistic option other than having to pay to implement RDA.

Another purpose of the wiki is to serve as common ground for developments in the greater metadata community. Therefore, there are links to the ONIX Best Practices, the Scholarly Works Application Profile, the AGRIS Application profile, among others. The common ground for these differing procedures will be found under the Conceptual Outline, which is based completely on ISBD (for the moment but based on wiki technology, this can change) and provides a separate page in the wiki for each bibliographical concept. The idea is to eventually bring together all the different rules for similar bibliographical concepts. For example, if you click on Title and Statement of Responsibility, you will see links into the relevant guidelines for ISBD and ONIX. If you continue into Title proper, you will see the relevant guidelines for more rules. Comments and attachments can be included here.

On this basis, metadata creators and developers can gain some understanding into the concepts and techniques used by others in similar fields. Perhaps some agreement can be reached and perhaps not, but without understanding, no agreement can ever be possible. A lot of work remains to be done in this area and it should be interesting to observe how it develops.

Still, this will remain a separate part and if someone wants to go straight into the LCRIs and get a specific answer, they will be able to do so without going through unrelated information, e.g. Library of Congress Rule Interpretations and the ISBD Outline.

This project actually has been created with great reluctance. We appreciate the tremendous efforts and knowledge on the part of our colleagues who have dedicated themselves to create RDA, but certain realities have intervened. Many libraries simply cannot implement RDA, and the practical advantages of RDA implemention have yet to be demonstrated.

A project such as this is obviously beyond a single person's abilities and the key is to rely on the participation of you: the cataloging community. Please help us and get involved.