[Koha] RDA, was: Re: Simple MARC or Simple Acquisitions?

[Nicolas Morin]

On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 2:22 PM, BWS Johnson <mhelman at illinoisalumni.org> wrote:
> Salve!
>

> Big warning: I'm not properly a cataloguer, but gosh over the years my
> cataloguing disguise seems to be getting very good.
>
> The time to think about a major overhaul is *now* since the RDA proposal is
> on the table.

Well... I'm doubtful about the chances of RDA being a runaway hit:
* it's not easily accessible (they're trying to actually sell the
recommandation rather than freely distribute it)
* it's not easily accessible (the mere ToC runs to 75 pages : who's
going to actually read this, let alone implement it?)
* it's not easily accessible (with 251 different "entities")
* if you want to make it accessible, you can do "profiles" to use only
subsets of those 251 entities; but wait: a recommandation with
different profiles to manage... sounds a lot like Z3950 to me, and is
in danger of reverting to the mess we have with UNIMARC / MARC21 /
NORMARC / WHATEVERMARC
* it looks a lot like marc too, with entities like "title proper",
"title uniform", etc

I don't know, I'm not a cataloger either : maybe RDA is the way to go,
I don't claim I'm competent to pass judgment on the recommandation
from a cataloguer's point of view, but I don't envision Ex Libris,
SirsiDynix or, for that matter, the Koha community investing what it
would take to just try to implement this thing. I'd love to be proved
wrong though.

Cheers,
Nicolas