Karen Coyle Keynote - R&D: Can Resource Description become Rigorous Data?

R&D: RDA in RDFor:Can Resource Description become Rigorous Data?Karen CoyleCode4Lib 2008Annotated version, March, 2008This is AACR2*. AACR2 is over 600 pages long, and it is the set of cataloging rules that librarians use when cataloging a book... or a film, or a piece of music, or anything else that will be cataloged.The cataloging rules are long and complex because the things they catalog are more complex than most of us can imagine. For example, these rules include the proper way to transcribe the names of Thai royalty; and when you have a book written by a spirit speaking through a medium, which one of those is the author? (Note, the answer to that last one changed between AACR1 and AACR2.)*Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, 2nd Edition3.5B2. If there is more than one map, plan, etc., on a sheet, specify the number of maps, etc.6 maps on 1 sheetAACR2 consists of instructions and examples. Here is a short instruction and the example of what the resulting bit of cataloging might look like.Note that the cataloging is expressed as text. AACR2 was first issued in 1978 when card catalogs were still the predominant form of catalog. A catalog card, of course, is a text document.This is a sample AACR2 catalog entry for AACR2.It is a highly structured, rules-based text, but it is still a text.(Examples of other structured texts are limericks and the address written on an envelope.)You can take that structured text and mark it up using MARC21, put it in a database and display it on a screen. It is still primarily a group of text strings that are intended to be read by human beings. In fact, I tend to think of the MARC21 format as a mark-up language, defining the structure of text, but far from a data processing record.AACR3Recognizing that these are different times, that all catalog data will be processed by computers; that there is a whole World Wide Web that is the primary information space for our users, the Joint Steering Committee on AACR began work in 2004 (or so) on the next generation catalog rules.RDA = Resource Description and AccessIt was soon determined that the new cataloging rules would be so vastly different from the ones A project of the Joint Steering Committee that came before, that for RDAthey no longer fit into the AACR tradition. The rules were renamed to RDA.● Library of Congress● British LibraryThe principle participants, ● Collections and Archives Canadahowever, still reflect an ● Australian National LibraryAnglo-American nature.This is the RDA logo.Does anyone else see a tetris game in here?Goals of RDAFRBRRDA has some very interesting and laudable goals. To begin with, RDA uses (or attempts to use) the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Data as its framework. I say “attempts to use” because the is the first implementation of FRBR as cataloging rules, and in a sense is a test of FRBR as a model.Goals of RDASimplifyAnother goal of RDA was to simplify the cataloging rules. Simplification and modularization will encourage communities to use RDA who before might have found it to be too rigid or too library-centric. Goals of RDA“Other” communitiesThe main “other communities” near the library space are museums and archives. This need to bring them together in a single data format is especially acute for institutions that have multiple roles: museums that also have libraries, libraries that include an archive, etc. They need to create compatible data, but the different functions often have very different metadata needs at some level.