Can we preserve all the good stuff we have created with cataloging? We spend too much time doing ‘admin’ work to keep local catalogs under control. See potential in the vision of the ‘semantic web’
Martha summarising the concepts of the semantic web, RDF, RDFS, OWL, SKOS, URIs
As an experiment, Martha decided to create a set of cataloguing rules that are more FRBRized than RDA – details available at her website. Noting, she really doesn’t expect people to adopt these rules – it is an experiment
Questions:
- Is it possible for catalogers to tell in all cases whether a piece of data pertains to the expression or the manifestation?
- Is it possible to fit our data into RDF/RDFS/OWL/SKOS
- If it is, is it possible to use that data to design indexes and displays that meet the objectives of the catalog (providing an efficient instrument to allow a user to find a particular work of which the author and title are known, a particular expression of a work, all of the works of an author, all of the works in a given genre or form, or all of the works on a particular subject)?
The overall question is:
- Can we do what we need to do within the context of the semantic web?
Some problems?
- Granularity issues – should we be more granular in some areas? Less granular in others?
Martha says that people who dislike MARC argue that it is too granular and requires too much of a learning curve. (I don’t agree – it is this simple, I believe we need to focus on what is important – in some areas this means more, and in others less, granularity – although I also don’t think this is the major problem with ‘MARC’ – the main problem is that others – outside libraries) don’t, and will never, adopt it)
- Is the internet fast enough to assemble a record from a linked set of URIs?
(I don’t agree with this either – Google’s model of crawling the web doesn’t require the web to be ‘fast’ – we can index/build in advance, not on the fly)
- Internet seems to be built on ‘free’ intellectual labour – only the programmers get paid
Martha feels this is a real problem – it costs money (it is expensive) to create cataloguing – takes intellectual labour
I think Martha’s experiment is fascinating – I think that many of her ‘problems’ are not actuall problems – but I think they deserve to be answered.
Some comments from the panel:
DH: Really appreciate the work that is being done by Martha – it is hard to get your head round this stuff. But some of the arguments are strawmen. Problems with the way that RDA looks at some of the problems – for e.g. false dichotomy between transcribed values and other values – no reason why both shouldn’t be accommodated.
JB: Need to make distinction between granularity and complexity. Records can be granular and interoperable – and people can decide how they can use that. Don’t need complex to be granular
I think the panel have picked up on the same things that I have. I think we all agree that the work that Martha is doing is great, and leading by example – we need more experiments like this – actual practical stuff, not just theoretical