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
My new gig is still at the overwhelming-but-in-a-good way phase. I've
got jobs open, btw, if you want to work with me. Once I'm a bit less short-staffed I'll be able to blog a bit more as previously promised. I've set myself a goal of posting at least once per week.
I've got a few ideas percolating plus a few longish posts which have been in draft since (eep!) last summer. I've been holding in my snarks about RDA. I've got long ignored notes from DCC to discuss. I've got a few stories about online identity management. And so on....
The big but is that I've been experiencing a lot of health issues. I've recently learned that my heart murmur may be getting worse and I've also got some thyroid funny business happening. Nothing to worry about most likely. It does mean a slew of tests and doctors appointments, however. All my promises above are predicated on my ability to stay well.
Labels: dcc-2007, 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
I finally got a moment to review the Peter Murry-Rust presentation. Unfortunately I couldn't do it using my Macbook and Firefox. It would crash my browser each time, probably got something to do with the ActiveX, I haven't had time yet to troubleshoot.
So many apologies to any of my Mac-using audience. I'll post an update/work-around as I get to it. I'm off to Santa Barbara county today with my beautiful wife and daughter so it will need to wait. LTB=life trumps blogging.
Labels: data curation, etd, life1.0, metadata, Peter Murray-Rust
Friends of mine run the annual
"Grilled Cheese Invitational". I didn't get a chance to compete last year because I went to Canada so I could get legally married. It seems like its getting bigger and more notorious as the years go by. I think there have been five or six so far. I can't recommend it highly enough. These folks take their grilled "sammiches" incredibly seriously. We're talking presentations that include costumes and cheerleaders. It is a heck of a lot of fun.
Grilled Cheese Invitational from
Hot Knivez on
VimeoLabels: life1.0
Administrivia first - It seems as if blogger ate my comments settings so I didn't receive the auto-notify that I had comments awaiting moderation. Many apologies to those of you who commented. I've got everything reset now.
So. I've discovered the downside of migrating. It's reading the old documents you wrote and cringing in embarrassment. Way back in the day I used to write a column for San Diego Sidewalk. Remember the Sidewalk sites? They were Microsoft's answer to Yahoo local. They
ended up getting bought by CitySearch. The column was called "Styletramps" and it appeared in the GLBT section of the site. I was the queer Vanna White of online shopping. The idea was to find fun, interesting things (fashion, music, whatever), and write about them. It was a fun gig -- they paid me $100 per column and the columns were small at 250 words.
I just pulled out the disk which had my columns and writing. Ach. The horror. The horror. Here's the bio I wrote for them:
I'm Laura Smart. Yes, that is my real name. No relation to Maxwell, but I was jealous when he married Agent 99. Barbara Feldman was not only a babe but a snappy dresser to boot! Like almost everyone else in this state I came from somewhere else -- London, Ontario to be precise. When I'm not style-tramping I'm a librarian (a.k.a. "Information Diva"). My multifarious dabbling includes playing keyboards, writing bad poetry, drawing, constantly redecorating my various spaces, matchmaking (always a bridesmaid, sigh!), and fashion on a shoe-string. Susie Bright is my hero. I'm dying to become Slater-Kinney's lead groupie and the first commercially successful female drag-queen. Maybe it's really a secret yearning to become Pamela DesBarres? While I convince Malcolm MacLaren to manage me, I'll continue my quest for San Diego's kookiest accoutrements.
I guess there really is a big difference between age 25 and 35. I am sooooooooo not that person anymore. Now days I spend my time training for long-range cycling trips with my wife and daughter, renovating my house, meditating at the Zen Center of Los Angeles, and making luscious raw vegan cuisine (fyi, i eat 80% raw ... but no, I'm not a vegetarian. I just play one on t.v.)
Labels: digital preservation, electronic files, life1.0, migration, refreshing, styletramp
