I have resigned from CC:DA. The meetings at this year's ALA Annual will be my last as a voting committee member. As a new manager I've had less time to deal with the deluge of detail. My attitude since formally resigning last winter is wake-me-when-its-over. Once it's released I'll work with colleagues in my institution to determine whether or not we need to implement.
Let the triumvirate figure out the business case.
Don't get me wrong. I think RDA is a good thing. There's a good conversation happening at the
Inquiring Librarian about RDA implementation and the LC statement. I agree with Jenn Riley that
that RDA is overall a positive thing, and that it represents a necessary (although of course not perfect) step forward in the ongoing evolution of libraries
I'm also with Irvin Flack, who commented on Jenn's post
I want RDA to work but I've decided I'm going to wait for the full final draft before I try to read any more of it. I become too frustrated and confused. I can't afford to lose any more hair! I find myself wondering: why on Earth did they write that rule that way?
A-effing-men!
They wrote RDA by cutting and pasting wholesale portions of AACR2 then re-writing bits -- not a good way to create a whole new means of looking at content standards for cataloging, IMHO. It also introduced a lot of the consistency errors within the text. Then they re-arranged the ordering of the parts and only released certain parts at at time. I found it impossible to keep a cohesive mental model of the drafts. I look forward to the full release. I don't think I'll read it though. Life's too short. I resigned from CC:DA because I don't have time to faithfully review it and contribute to its development anymore. I'd love to follow it, but I need to be practical with my time and my health since
beginning to have problems in that realm. Not to mention
the hernia risk.
I intend to test catalog some things using the electronic version of RDA when available. Let the print version die please! I realize that some small, less funded, libraries will still need to work from a print version hence the JSC's decision to stick with publishing both print+online. But couldn't we write it online and let the people with less money print out customized versions rather than writing it as if we still live in a print-centric world when it comes to "standards" for working with metadata? That could help with the cohesiveness issues in the text.
As a manager of a small cataloging and acquisitions operation I sometimes wonder just how relevant RDA is going to be in our future. I suspect not much. Sorry. I had to talk about the elephant in my room.
Shelf-ready monographs, umpteen thousand title electronic resource packages, open access eBooks, etc. mean that I'll be ingesting more records directly from publishers. And do publisher's give a rat's ass about RDA? (see
EDitEUR) As for legacy bib records in my OPAC, I predict that somebody will write a MARC/RDA translator and that we'll be automating the migration of records (if it proves necessary, which I believe it may not).
I suspect it will be better for MPOW to play the middle road. Wait until other libraries adopt RDA and see how they do. I've got other priorities right now. MPOW is a specialized research institution. Our metadata services are moving in the direction of assisting with the information management of resources created on campus. Sure we'll always order books and journals but that stuff is going to become more automated as time goes by. RDA is not on my radar as a skill set I need to be training people to have. Understanding metadata formats and interoperability is a bigger concern. Ditto metadata for digital preservation and data curation. I suspect repositories and reference will be our library's life blood. I believe
John Wilbanks was right when he said providing things like namespaces will be the bread and butter of the new-school library. We need to have the skills to do that type of thing or we risk diminished relevancy when our primary clientèle's needs are not being met. And yeah, we need to do the appropriate needs assessment to determine that we prioritize in terms of evolving the library.
I'm filing RDA under nice-to-be-aware-of but not worth following in detail anymore. But that's just me. Your mileage may vary.
Labels: cataloging, CC:DA, life1.0, metadata, RDA
I'm going to pull a
Mark Lidner and give up on trying to comment
the Futures report. There's been a huge-o explosion of happenings in the bibliographic wilderness this past week. It's hard enough for me to get the most relevant-to-me stuff even read.
I did attend the
3rd International Conference on Digital Curation and I'll try to summarize my copious notes. I'll be writing a trip report anyway, so it serves a dual purpose. In the meantime, check out what
Peter Murray-Rust and
Chris Rusbridge have to say about it.
Other things worth reviewing and commenting on which I probably won't:
- OAI-ORE alpha specification
- Yee's cataloging rules
- Zotero IA alliance
- Roy Tennant on the term "bibliographic control" (which I've always LOATHED ... it gives me mental images of leather-clad dominatrices demanding all the books be returned to a library)
What's with all this stuff coming out during this season anyway? Holy
Toledo people! It's time for holidays. Stop blogging already and go spend time with your families! I wish I could, but the next draft of RDA is going to be released very soon and I need to have it under my belt prior to ALA Midwinter for CC:
DA's discussion.
I'm starting to wonder if I even have time to blog at all... how the heck does everybody else manage it? Don't you have lives?
Labels: CC:DA, dcc-2007, LC, life1.0, metadata, Peter Murray-Rust, RDA
The
unedited web cast of the 11/13 meeting of the LC working group is available.
Karen Coyle does a nice summary.
Recommendation 4.2 re: RDA is particularly interesting esp. coming on the heels of the JSC's recent re-re-organization of the RDA structure.
4.2 Realize FRBR. The framework known as FRBR has great potential but so far is untested. It is being used as the basis for RDA, even though FRBR itself is not clearly understood. The working group recommends that no further work be done on RDA until there has been more investigation of FRBR and the basis it provides for bibliographic metadata. [Note: this recommendation is likely to change such that there will be specific recommendations relating to RDA; FRBR will be treated separately.]
The LC report has it dead.bang.on with that recommendation. The connections between FRBR and RDA weren't made explicit until the last revision of the
RDA Prospectus and the release of
the mapping this past June . They key phase is "
FRBR itself is not clearly understood. "
Building a de-facto standard based upon a conceptual model which isn't clearly understood seems kind of bass-ackward. Is it realistic, however, to wait for FRBR to be better understood? We've had it for almost a decade. Let me play devil's advocate for a second. If a conceptual model is difficult to understand than maybe it's not a very good model? It's one argument for a do-over on writing RDA.
I think stopping the RDA process and re-starting from scratch from the conceptual model up would be ideal. Especially if when re-starting the process the JSC continued to consult with non-library related communities to discuss their conceptual models and come to a common, or at least complimentary, model(s)
prior to coming up with specifications for the actual metadata. The problem is stopping the RDA process is never going to happen. The publication schedule is driving this train and JSC has no intention of deviating from the proposed 2009 release. Remember that JSC reports to the RDA Committee of Principles, which consists of reps from the national library organizations which have a vested interest in their publishing income. There is no economic incentive for the JSC to call a halt to things and re-think. It's unrealistic to expect that to change and crazy-making to those of us commenting on RDA to keep requesting it. The stop-the-presses option has been discussed more than once at CC:DA and we keep coming back to the same conclusion.
What to do then? As best we can. I am optimistic that RDA may, eventually, get things right. The JSC is getting better about working with other stakeholder groups. See, for example, the
DCMI/RDA task group working on a DC application profile for RDA and a controlled element vocabulary. I think it's conceivable that more partnerships will be developed and that RDA will evolve to be based upon a mutually understood conceptual framework -- most likely a more fully-understood FRBR. It will be interesting to see the full LC working group recommendations when they are released on 12/1. Maybe, given recommendation 4.2 they will suggest another RDA/?? working group on fully exploring the implications of FRBR as a conceptual model and integrating the conceptual models of other communities.
All I really know is that RDA will be an imperfect work-in-progress for quite a long time. We all have to accept that we will have a release-refine-release cycle and that we won't get perfection the first time out. Otherwise we'll wait forever.
Labels: cataloging, CC:DA, FRBR, JSC, LC, metadata, RDA
Announced today by Cheri Folkner, CC:DA chair
I am happy to announce that Patty Hatch has agreed to serve as CC:DA's webmaster through ALA Annual 2010. Patty received her MLS from Simmons College and currently works as an educational technology & communications Specialist at Harvard. Previously she was a senior training librarian in Harvard University Library's Office for Information Systems.
Patty will be working with Christine Taylor of the ALCTS office in transitioning the CC:DA website from Penn State to ALA hosted servers once ALA is ready to host the web pages -- that may be after Midwinter rather than this fall. I am sure that Patty will keep us updated on the timetable and progress of the transition. I have also appointed Patty to CC:DA's TF on internal/external communication.
Although John Attig will be doing some webmaster duties until the transition is complete, my hope is that the transition will ease the workload for him so he won't have to be worrying about the CC:DA website while performing his ALA rep responsibilities. John's work as CC:DA webmaster has been tremendous -- CC:DA is in his debt.
Congratulations Patty! I look forward to working with you via the CC:DA Task Force on Internal and External Communication
Labels: CC:DA, metadata
If you (a) understand cataloging and
metadata and (b) have mad web skills then the ALA Cataloging Committee on Description and Access (a.k.a. CC:DA) needs you.
At ALA Annual CC:DA voted to establish an official web master position. John
Attig, our current web master, has become our representative to the
JSC. If you are interested contact me (laura.j.smart on
gmail) or Cheri
Folkner (
cherifolkner at
boisestate dot
edu) , chair of CC:DA.
The web master may not have to attend every ALA conference in order to do the job. This is an important gig because we are porting the current CC:DA web site to ALA managed servers and because we have a Task Force examining all aspects of CC:DA communication. We want the committee to make full use of emerging technologies to better reach our constituents.
Labels: cataloging, CC:DA, metadata
I want to write about CC:DA comments on RDA Ch.6 and 7, but it will take me eons to pull together the issues. I started the new gig yesterday and have some thoughts akin to Karen's about starting a new job.
In the meantime, I want to point out
SciVee, an incredibly cool tool for disseminating scientific information. It makes me incredibly happy to see
SDSC's involvement. I first saw scientific visualizations back in 1996 when I was
SDSC's librarian. At the time I was responsible for maintaining a bibliography of publications by the center's researchers. The "bib" as it was affectionately known, was kept for NSF reporting purposes. Big grants mean big accountability and the number of peer-reviewed publications is one measurement of a project's success. At the time I felt that it would be really cool to create
metaworks of articles with their associated publications,
presentations AND raw data. Those
metaworks would need to be engendered via
metadata for bibliographic families. Ten years later all of these disparate yet related materials are beginning to come together within tools scientists can use. That's just wicked rad!
Even though I'm glad to see this trend, it does make me ponder the role of cataloging and
metadata services within academic libraries vs. public libraries. Our audiences are so different and the types of materials we deal with are so different that I wonder if it's a good idea to continue to hold alliances with rules such as RDA. As CC:DA reviews RDA, I'm continually reminded to think about small, rural, public libraries and the needs of those libraries with less funding. Can a standard for bibliographic description work for both the academic handling bibliographic families pulled together on-the-fly AND the small town librarian handling graphic novels?
I have my doubts.
Labels: CC:DA, metadata, RDA, SciVee, SDSC
I've returned from cycling the Underground Railroad. Another tour member -
Crazyguyonabike -- posted a ton of pix. We didn't take many ourselves since
Adventure Cycling is going to be sending us a DVD with all the photos they can gather from the 90+ participants. What's really incredibly cool is that OCLC has teamed up with Adventure Cycling to provide a map of public libraries with Internet hot-spots along the route. Makes me proud(er) to be a librarian.
My daughter Z. did an AMAZING job as stoker on the tandem with wife M. as captain. She got to learn about some American history which she'll be taking in school this year as a fifth grader. She also had so much fun that she wants to continue doing tours in summer vacations to come. Yay. Next year we're thinking about cycling Greece since 6th grade is ancient history. We'll see.
I'm catching up with CC:DA work. Our commenting period for the revised Ch.6 & 7 is over. Now voting members are in the phase of reviewing one another's comments on the CC:DA wiki and indicating whether they agree/disagree. The process, while tedious, is very interesting to me. Lots of folks have strong feelings about it. I suspect it will take me several hours to work through it. Fortunately, my wifi works on the front porch and there are no rules against reading RDA commentary from a deck chair with
an icy glass of Mojave Red.
Labels: CC:DA, cycling
The live feed info is available for the 3rd meeting of the LC Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control at
http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/live.
I found out via the CC:DA email list, which btw, should soon be viewable to the public. I made the comment that it's too bad that CC:DA meetings couldn't be done that way and save the interns the work of compiling the minutes. As a former intern, I'm well aware of the work involved in ensuring accurate records.
Can CC:DA podcast meetings and accept the video as "the record" and leave the interns to summarize the content and outcomes of the meetings for distribution channels?
I'd like to investigate tools, costs, learning curve, etc. I know the Code4Libbers have podcasts going, I know LITA has podcasts going (I have not had the time, unfortunately, to view/listen to those podcasts). The idea is within the realm of possibility. What I don't know is the socio-political implications of making such a suggestion within the structures of ALA/ALCTS. I confess. I haven't read the ALA Handbook. I've treated it more like a reference work that I review on a need-to-know basis.
It's something that the CC:DA Task Force on Internal and External communication has to investigate. I would love to hear others thoughts on using social software tools to better do the work of CC:DA. Would people view podcasts of CC:DA meetings? Caveat emptor: they are lengthy.
Labels: CC:DA
I'm glad that
Meredith, and others have brought up the issue of staying sane. Librarian life can be stressful. There are reasons I sought such a long break between gigs. I need to decompress. I let myself get overworked, discouraged, run-down in the past few months and I owe to myself to regain my health. My first month of vacation has been hectic and not quite the respite I need.
Part of regaining my health involves getting s**t done. There's a bathroom and bedroom to be painted and a home office needing a purge. I've been drinking the David Allen Kool-Aid so I'm going through all the steps of integrating those time management principles into my life. The idea is to get all those unfinished niggly things out of the way so I don't stress about them. I haven't gotten very far with the niggly things yet because I've been busy with gadgets, CC:DA work, culinary school, and ALA travel.
I lucked into a bit of money and was able to procure a MacBook and upgrade my cell phone to a Treo -- I'm hoping it will help me implement GTD. So far, it's just been yet-more-stuff-to-learn. The MacBook is (oestensibly) for my daughter. She has graciously allowed me to abscond with it for a couple of months. I've been geeking out installing a bunch of open source software and learning my way around Appledom. As a bonus, it's good for practicing the
techbootcamp unix cheat sheet commands (password=library). It is not a bonus for getting sh**t done. Evaluating and installing software takes time. Especially when your software installations fail because you didn't know to drag the installer to the application folder to do the installation. Nothing like beginning with a new operating system to humble one's-self. Add another new OS (Palm) to the mix and one really needs to get into the groove of
beginner's mind. My struggles to learn new tech have been ongoing since the day I left MFPOW.
My first few days off were spent with virtual colleagues writing
the preliminary report of the CC:DA Task Force on Internal and External Communication. I was hoping to write more about RDA ch.3. I haven't forgotten my promises to comment. I just have trouble finding dedicated time for writing coherently. See the part above re: stressing myself out. Task force deadlines have trumped analysis and opinion pieces for the blog. I can't even keep up with NGC4LIB. In the interest of staying sane, I hereby renege on my promises and add a very weak, "what they said!" to the others who have already very ably commented on Ch.3.
Speaking of getting sh**t done, CC:DA has the most work of any committee upon which I've ever served. I've been getting to know the history and purpose of CC:DA committee quite well during my participation on the TF. That is worth blogging about. I sense a bit of a disconnect between our purpose and our work. I've added it to my tickler file. I spent the better part of June madly reading all of the paperwork coming from the JSC and attending
culinary school in Ft. Bragg, CA. I've now got two courses towards my certification as a raw vegan chef under my belt.
I'm working on house and personal stuff so I can make space for all this writing I'm not doing. I have lots of opinions about the RDA scope document update and the various goings on. Right now, however, it's all I can do to keep up with the reading and committee voting stuff. ALA was its typical mad blur of meetings and travel. I'm happy to (finally) be back at home, even if only for a brief respite.
I'll be driving cross-continent and
cycling the Underground RR with the wife and kid for the last half of July/early August so posts are likely to be intermittent. There will be a lot of RDA stuff coming down the pipe for me to review for CC:DA, so that will form the bulk of my time online along with continuing to learn about my new Mac/Palm personal computing environment.
I really need to do better at doing nothing with my vacation time.
Labels: CC:DA, RDA
Diane Hillmann comments on a May 11 post to NGC4LIB by Karen Coyle. Karen says "The problem that we see today in the library world is that when there is a standard that is rising up to the point of being useful and usable by many in our community, it isn't clear where to take it so that it can move from being a neat hack to being a community standard," and suggests that ALA is the obvious body to promote library interests, at least in theory.
Diane asks "given this standards reality check from Karen, what are the implications for us?"
I say the implication for ALA is that the Divisions need to coordinate better on standards. They need to speed up the official channels of communication between committees. The extreme busyness of people contributes to the lack of standards work being done. Nobody wants more work. The other part of it is that we're not making effective use of social tools to do the business of the association. We create more work for ourselves by not using the time-saving new tools. The difficulty is that learning the tools takes time+effort=more work. There's no incentive to change.
That's starting to change (hooray for ALA communities,wikis, and blogs despite their growing pains! hooray for hiring Jenny Levine! ). But I still have trouble convincing people to use web-based conferencing a go. The reason it takes months for a committee to write a report is that, even with email, it takes time to send out a doc, get responses, compile responses, synthesize and summarize, check back in with committee members, then take necessary actions.
Come to think of it, a committee probably only recommends actions. Another problem is assigning responsibility for action and following through to make sure it's done!
As a task force chair, I'd much rather have one single real-time discussion with the task force members to gather all comments at once. It's faster. I'd like to spend less time volunteering please. Perhaps if we did better with the social tools, we'd do better with the standards work? ALA already has some channels in place for standards development. I give you the example of CC:DA.
I just submitted a preliminary report from the
CC:DA's Task Force on Internal and External communication. The TF reviewed
CC:DA's charge as well as
"Building international descriptive cataloging standards..." (the promotional "pamphlet" to explain to the masses just what-the-heck CC:DA does).
In the CC:DA charge section of the
"Building international.." document it says:
To develop official ALA positions on proposed international cataloging policies and standards pertaining to the committee’s area of responsibility and to advise the official ALA representative; or, if there is no official ALA representative, to act as the clearinghouse within ALA for review of these policies and standards and to serve as the formal liaison between ALA and the originating organizations.
Most of the committee scope described "Building international..." is related to the development of AACR and interactions with the JSC. Yet it also says CC:DA's role is to develop official ALA positions on cataloging and related standards. This bullet point quoted above indicates, to me anyway, that CC:DA should be taking a proactive role in standards discussions within ALA. It also means we need to pay attention to the first two words, "to develop." The FBI calls that a clue, son. To develop implies taking action. (smile). I think this action needs to be both internal to ALA and external to other standards bodies. CC:DA has sucked at taking the external-to-ALA actions.
Take a look at the CC:DA roster, for example. Most of the external liaison members are from library or librarian associations. There weren't any non-library bodies represented until Diane Hillmann (for DCMI) and Curtiss Priest (for IEEE) were added.
The "Building international ... standards" document also says that CC:DA welcomes suggestions
*In applying standards for bibliographic control to new and emerging technologies
*In employing automated solutions to the development of descriptive cataloging records.
Yes, CC:DA welcomes suggestions but has really only been taking them from librariankind.
If CC:DA is supposed to do standards work, why hasn't it? The snark in me wants to say that it's because the minutiae of dealing with AACR and MARC takes up all of CC:DA time and probably a forest's worth of paper. To be fair, there is the "pertaining to the committee’s area of responsibility" clause in the "Building international ... standards" document. AACR really is the bulk of CC:DA's area of responsibility as per the written charge. I can understand how we could collectively miss following through on a wee little suggestion to develop positions for ALA beyond AACR/RDA. I don't think it excuses the neglect, however. At CC:DA meetings we really don't much discuss standards beyond AACR/RDA (if we consider that a standard).
Betty Landesman, ALA's NISO rep, gives us a report each Midwinter and Annual, and she announces NISO proposals/votes on the CC:DA email list which gives committee members the opportunity to respond. I've tried to review those and give Betty feedback, but I just couldn't. My life is f.u.l.l. And I have no idea if other CC:DA members, voting or non, give Betty any feedback either. My sense is that nobody does, but you'd have to ask Betty.
I bear some of the blame for this lack of attention to the standards proposals as a voting member of CC:DA. Diane hit the nail on the head when she said the work of standards development doesn't happen, "mostly because we already have busy lives and sometimes our institutions don’t support such activity very well. " The RDA publication process has CC:DA members in a mire of reading/thinking/responding work. Not an excuse for not paying attention to standards. Especially when I hold the radical view that ALA should insist on decoupling RDA development from the Committee of Principles' publication schedule. I can't very well argue that radical stance unless CC:DA members are willing to be proactive in their involvement with the other related standards work.
I think it means that we need to add more people to CC:DA in order to spread the work load around a bit more. I also think it means that the CC:DA TF on Communication really needs to come up with concrete, do-able, alternatives to CC:DA's current methods of disseminating information.
Labels: CC:DA, metadata, RDA, standards
