WoGroFuBiCo uproar!
The Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control’s webcast (Real Video, 88 minutes), is now available online. If you missed it before, now you can see it at your leisure. I haven’t watched it yet, but I’ve read some the discussion about it.
Janet Hill on AUTOCAT, in Working Group Report/Meeting, sent a lengthy and informative post, ending with:
One of the things that we have tried to do in this report, is to provide both a vision of a future, AND to recommend things that need to be done in the interim. In other words, we aren’t recommending implementation of a future that isn’t here yet. I suspect that there will be very few recommendations that cause much angst in any quarter. The only recommendation that might cause a stir was our recommendation to suspend further developmental work on RDA until after FRBR has been more adequately tested on real data and the results of those tests can be analyzed.
Isn’t this a chicken-and-egg question? If work on RDA is suspended, then we’ve lost the most useful instrument for testing the FRBR model on real data. I can see how one might want to postpone implementation of RDA until it could be demonstrated that the FRBR model, as expressed in RDA, was a viable basis for organizing bibliographic metadata (which might or might not mean postponing beyond 2009), but I can’t see how this entails suspending development work on RDA, especially in light of the results of the most recent JSC meeting (which seem aimed at aligning RDA even more closely with FRBR/FRAD and ER/OO models).
You make a reasonable point, but all of us, even the most technologically oriented, and even those who were most likely to champion RDA, were in agreement that if (for example) there are some areas where systems can’t actually handle the concepts, it makes little sense to write a set of rules based on the assumption that system capability CAN. Further, as I noted in the presentation, although we connected our recommendation about RDA to FRBR testing, there were other areas of concern about RDA (which will get into the report), that JSC may be able to address while the FRBR testing is going on.
It may also be useful to know that we were not originally going to make this recommendation. Early on, our general thought was that we should recommend that FRBR and RDA be implemented as quickly as possible, that continued delay of what looked like the inevitable was creating difficulties in moving forward. It was only after considerable discussion as we actually put together our recommendations and saw how they were hanging together, that we realized that we needed to make the recommendation we did.
In the blog world, Karen Coyle posted her notes on the meeting, and you’ll want to read the whole thing, but I’ll just pick out one recommendation she mentions:
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.]
How this will fit together with the decision to redo Resource Description and Access and base it much more closely on FRBR and FRAD, I don’t know. Both groups were working simultaneously and I don’t know how much interplay there was or how much each knew what the other was thinking.
Planet Cataloging will pick up lots more posts about this. That’s where I saw Laura J. Smart’s LoC Future of Bibliographic Control and RDA:
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, for one, had no idea that the folks working on RDA were considering dramatic changes. Nor do I have a clear idea yet what the scope of those changes are, nor how they relate to FRBR, if at all. I also didn’t know that LC had “rejected” FAST (as B Tillet said in her comments at the meeting), and still don’t know why. Is there something about our profession that we work in secret groups like conspirators? Perhaps we should start doing our development on wikis so that more can participate and everyone can see the development of the ideas. It’s hard to understand a complex standard or document if you can’t wafollow the train of thought of the group developing them. (pls excuse typos – on a strange keyboard, and a screen that is wonky.)
Comment by Karen Coyle — 19 November 2007 @ 5:37 amWhen people say that frbr is not well understood what do they mean:
1) The conceptual model itself is not understood — it is unclear to people what the frbr entities mean or how they relate entities they are used to dealing with.
2) How frbr would be implemented is not well understood — we do not have a clear idea of how to build
a system based on frbr or what such a system would be like or what the implications of migrating
current library systems to an frbr-based system would be.
These seem to be (at least) two distinct problems that would have to be addressed in different ways.
I’m an frbr beginner so perhaps the answer to this question is clear to most people.
(As an aside, the fact that a conceptual model is difficult to grasp (or initially difficult to grasp)
doesn’t necessarily mean it is a bad model. I think more abstract or generalized models tend to be
more difficult to understand than literal models but also tend to be more flexible and powerful.)
Alan
Comment by Alan Ritchie — 20 November 2007 @ 12:14 pmThe same question came to my mind about FRBR not being understood, Alan. I think the answer from the working group will be yes to both of your points, but in addition, and probably more importantly, there is a question mark about how well FRBR represents the bibliographic universe. People are saying FRBR-OO is a better model than FRBR-ER. However, if FRBR-ER is not understood (in the first of your two senses) then FRBR-OO is bridge WAY too far. Perhaps the extent of the changes involved to RDA and by extension MARC are increasingly being seen as just too great for the potential pay-offs.
If FRBR IS scuttled as a basis for RDA, I’d like to see at least some formalisation of the bibliographic model underpinning all those intricate rules.
- Irvin
PS – I support Karen’s idea of working in wikis.
Comment by Irvin Flack — 21 November 2007 @ 1:43 am