2007/11/15: LoC Future of Bibliographic Control and 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.

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