I have thought for a long time that there are two sorts of behaviour displayed in people who do cataloguing, with most people doing some mixture of both.
The first is the organising temperament - liking to sort things out, make things clear, set things out neatly, resolve muddle. This is the mindset that likes rules and clarity and consistency, that enjoys data creation and input.
The second is the mindset that puzzles out what to do with data, how to get it out, how searches and indexes work or ought to work, who want to use the data to produce answers.
As I said, most cataloguers are a mixture of both, and both are important. If the data isn't good, then you can't use it effectively. Rubbish in, rubbish out. On the other hand, there's no point in having data if you don't, or can't, use it. But although most cataloguers are a mixture of both types of mindset, and use both in their work, most cataloguers incline to one more than the other and are either data creators by instinct, or data users.
The whole RDA argument seems to be between those two ways of thinking. Opponents of RDA often worry about what will happen when the rules change, what the effect will be on catalogues which contain both RDA and non-RDA data, whether it will be possible, let alone desirable, to maintain consistency and order. That is the voice of the data creator.
Supporters of RDA believe that it will enable us to make more of our catalogue data, spread it more widely, combine it more easily with other types of data. That is the data user speaking.
Most of us are both data creators and data users and therefore end up divided on RDA. Is some of the heat in the debate generated by the fact that we are all arguing with ourselves?
That's a very interesting way of looking at it. It certainly chimes with a lot of the debate I've seen. I think there is a third issue to do with RDA as a document (the way it's written, the freedom of access to it) as well as the way the document is managed (who writes it, who decides who writes it, how to comment on it, changes to it, charges, etc.). I have major problems with the way the RDA document has been managed as I don't think the very closed nature of the standard sits well with the idea of spreading our data (and ideas) more widely.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment. I agree that the structure and the vocabulary of RDA are off-putting - but then, it is unfamiliar. AACR, seen for the first time, was pretty odd, but we've had plenty of time to get accustomed to it. And I agree that the cost of RDA - the ongoing cost of subscription - is a bit of a bummer as well, especially as things are at the moment.
ReplyDeleteBut do you think that we have less chance to comment on, and contribute to, RDA than we have with AACR? Any standard is, by its very nature, controlled and relatively static; and the management of AACR too was in the hands of a fairly small number of people.
Or, do you think we should be doing more to publicise RDA outside the library (and especially the cataloguing) community?