One of the great things about focusing on a library topic that is supposedly out-of-date--you can find cheap books on the subject at Amazon.com. So, last week I read an essay written by Michael Gorman circa 1979, Cataloging and the New Technologies. In it he presciently describes a bibliographic model very similar to the new, "future" RDA scenario #1.
Those of you familiar with the development of Resource Development and Access (RDA) will know that scenario #1 describes entity records connected by links.
Anyway, Michael Gorman often gets a bad rap out here in the library blogosphere, but in this essay he proves to be very forward-thinking indeed.
(This essay can be found in: Foundations of Cataloging: A Sourcebook.)
There's an irony in MG laying down the theoretical model for RDA, given his recent comments:
"FRBR may have some merit as a way of looking at the theory of cataloguing—it has little as a foundational document for creating a cataloguing code. Never mind that the structure of bibliographic records set out in AACR2/ISBD is well established, accepted by scholars and other catalogue users for decades, and with minor flaws in concept and expression that could easily be corrected—it works in practice, but does it work in theory?"
'RDA: the coming cataloging debacle' http://www.slc.bc.ca/rda1007.pdf
Posted by: Irvin Flack | Tuesday, August 19, 2008 at 12:08 AM
I think Michael Gorman falls squarely into the camp of those who feel there was no need to develop a new cataloging code.
I'd love to hear more as to why he thinks FRBR "has little as a foundational document for creating a cataloguing code." I've been wondering for a long time why he's been such a absent voice in the future of cataloging conversation.
Posted by: Chris Schwartz | Tuesday, August 19, 2008 at 06:58 AM