Like many of you, I rushed over to read Shawne Miksa’s new article in the ASIS Bulletin, “Resource Description and (RDA) and New Research Potentials.”
The article is exactly what it claims. A list of suggested research directions, wholly appropriate for the ASIS Bulletin. Don’t look for it to break new ground. Those of us who have been following the issues and discussions will appreciate the articulation of research directions but this is not really an article that some may be hoping for.
My favorite sentence, however, is in reference to the ongoing tests of the RDA draft. “These tests should generate a considerable amount of data for analysis and study. At the very least, the testing may simply reveal that the rules don’t work and thus show us how not to develop cataloging guidelines, which is always a valuable lesson.”
Paradigm shift is just as overused a phrase as deck chairs on the Titanic but what we have is a cluster of paradigmatic shifts going on. We are shifting from the concept of bibliographic and authority records to mashable metadata. RDA looked in this direction but when work was undertaken five years ago, we weren’t where we are now. We are also coming to realize that we can no longer treat our standards as the writing of a copyrighted book with its ownership in the hands of a publisher. Standards need to be open and the ownership/copyright model is antithetical to this.
June 8, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Sorry, no, wasn’t really meant to break new ground. Just some thoughts on areas I feel will need attention and analysis. I am fascinated, though, by the parallel between the controversy over AACR2 when it was released in the late 1970s and the current controversy over RDA. History repeats, thus we should heed its lessons. (But, let’s not kill the racehorse (or the jockeys) before they make it out of the gate. If at first we don’t succeed–find out why–and try try again.)
June 8, 2009 at 4:02 pm
Hi Shawne, What are some of the parallels? I guess concern with the economics of making the changes is one. Are there others?
Having worked with a card catalog that did not change old cards, just interfiled new AACR2 cards, I know what kind of chaos we can create for our users during transition periods. But I also learned from that catalog that the “new” eventually takes over and seems natural.
June 8, 2009 at 7:24 pm
The cost of it all, obviously, but what strikes me as the biggest parallel is the resistance to change—the plain old fear of change, the “this is how we’ve always done it and I don’t see why we need to change” resistance, etc. All of this in addition to the very astute and critical analysis of the changes and how they may or may not work–which are appropriate and always needed. I haven’t made a formal study of it–just have been collecting the literature written at the time. We have to adjust for the kind of technology we have now, as opposed to what was available in the late 70s and early 1980s. And, we must also take into account the different information and systems perceptions of both practictioners (sp?) and users. We don’t see and use information in exactly the same way, and certainly our expectations are different. Overall, though, I’ve maintained for a few years now that we will have approximately 5 years of chaos with this current transition, just as they did with AACR2.
June 11, 2009 at 10:57 pm
One of the big differences I see from the early ’80s transition is the vastly different ways we communicate. Then the emphasis was on organized group training (everybody was re-trained to be ready for “Day 1.” Now there’s nothing like that, no such top-down stuff, we’re learning from each other, sharing our concerns, etc. It seems more chaotic, but I’m not sure it is, nor do I think there’s more fretting now (I remember A LOT then).
June 13, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Shawne just said, “We have to adjust for the kind of technology we have now, as opposed to what was available in the late 70s and early 1980s.” But RDA eschews technology. Is it appropriate to be spending the training time, etc. that switching from AACR2 to RDA will cost in 2009-2011 when it looks like the catalog as we know it may well disappear? Yes, for some, this is a fight against change. The major fights against adoption of AACR2 did not have to do with fear of change.
There were practical questions involving expenditure of labor. The controversies with AACR2 were related to needing to manually change and re-file great numbers of printed cards to change “Illinois. University.” to “University of Illinois.” And although those arguments that occurred at the implementation of AACR2, the form of entry rule changes had chiefly occurred in 1967 and were delayed in implementation (“superimposition”) because of the labor issues involved in making the changes in card catalogs. In the early 1980s, card catalogs were still the norm and it is only relatively recently that the ability to make global heading changes in catalogs is relatively easy.