TLA Preconference - RDA

In a word: Disappointing. Very long on theory (most of the morning), rehashing much of what I already got from my last RDA workshop. I found myself nodding off intermittently. I found the breaks in between sessions more informative, listening to colleagues chew over FRBR/RDA, many with their own private "WTF?" moments amongst themselves and their intimate colleagues. I made mental notes of who around me seemed to be having issues and philosophical objections similar to my own thoughts.

The morning session seemed devoted to a type of RDA cheerleading and futurist hype and enthusiasm. All well and good but I wanted to see the Demo and examples set for the afternoon, as well as the implementation guidelines. I walked down the street for lunch to the Home Plate Bar & Grill, right next to Minute Maid Park and grabbed a burger, fries, and a fountain drink. I skimmed my copy of Slow Reading by John Miedema while I waited for my food, and during the slower parts of the presentation, too, to be honest.

The Demo turned out to be merely more power point slides, this time of screen shots of what the working RDA Online product is supposed to look like; The actual database is still behind schedule, still not online yet.

The Examples were okay, but riddled with annoying typos and errors...some due to rule changes enacted after the packets were put together, but some just...ugh. Ms. Tillett apologized for the "minor typos", but I could only do a "facepalm" after awhile, since there are no "minor typos" in cataloging, only cataloging errors. As examples showing the difference between RDA and AACR2r2, they were inconsistent.

Some of the changes I have no objection to, like ditching the "rule of three" and listing ALL authors credited on a multi-author work. I can even (maybe) live with adjusting title punctuation to match exactly what appears on the item in lieu of time-honored AACR "Sentence punctuation" style. I'm less thrilled with ditching abbreviations. On the surface, to an English-only audience, this sounds like a great idea at first, but when you think about it in an international context, do we really want to deal with full phrasing in so many foreign languages, or a unified system of abbreviations that is truly international, especially the latin ones. I think this will make more of a mess of things than we currently deal with.

As one colleague summarized near the end of the day, this has always been about display issues from vendors and how much (or how little) of the encoded MARC data they use and how they choose to display it, regardless if the MARC data was input using AACR2r2 or RDA. I still remain unconvinced of the need for such a radical revision of the cataloging code if we're primarily talking about a display issue in OPACs that already don't take full advantage of what MARC can do now, informed by AACR2r2. But LC seems determined to push ahead come hell or high water and will implement regardless, which is a truly frightening prospect on some levels. OCLC is also on board, which will drag the rest of us along, ready or not. Ms. Tillett did confirm that "Work" level records would be treated as their own new kind of Authority record, managed by LC in cooperation with OCLC. Which I kind of suspected would have to be the case.

The discussion kind of bogged down in the afternoon. I still fail to see why authority controlled Uniform Titles as currently exist in AACR2r2 don't already meet the FRBR goals that everyone is so passionate about, which leads one to question the need for the theoretically problematic "work" level records proposed by a more strict interpretation of FRBR and realized by RDA. There was a lot of nice talk about resource sharing and cooperative cataloging and "future search tools" but not much substance at this stage. I'm glad LC is at least going to be testing this stuff before releasing it more generally. I have my doubts as to how thorough the testing will be, who can comment on the results, and if their comments will be given any weight, or if RDA will be implemented regardless of the results because it's "too big to fail", i.e. too much time and money and effort has been poured into this enterprise and there's too much psychology of prior investment to really let it go, as the Working Group Report as much as recommended some time ago (specifically it was counseled to "suspend work on RDA"), but which LC brusquely brushes aside as an unthinkable option.

I got the sense, too, that what's really driving this decision is the perception that this can make current copy-cataloging practices even more efficient and cost-saving by going with RDA by linking and by eliminating as much redundancy from the system as possible. Never mind that redundant systems are not always a bad thing--ask USAF pilots who fly the A-10 about that.

I'm writing this post only a few hours after the meeting broke up, while it is fresh on my mind. My opinions at this point are highly subjective, I'm just getting ideas down in pixel form while they're still percolating in my head. I may revise my positions later.

The afternoon Q&A after the "examples" session ran so long that we didn't have time at all to touch on RDA implementation recommendations whatsoever. That was really disappointing, though I do think the Q&A was valuable and important. I'm a little sour at their calling the "Demo" a Demo. It's not a demo unless it's online and live. What we got, in effect, is an artist rendering of a demo, not the demo itself.

I don't know that I'm any closer to writing a professional article, either in Cataloging and Classification Quarterly or some other related professional periodical; I still am acutely aware that I'm a lightweight when it comes to cataloging theory and practice. But I'm afraid I left today's session with yet more questions than answers about RDA. RDA = Resource Description and Access. Also known to some as "Retirement Day Approaches" or to us young'uns as "Real Disaster Ahead". It may be that it's pointless to quibble about the philosophical shortcomings of FRBR, as Ms. Tillett asserted that other nations had been successfully using the model for years (though I would have appreciated viewing some concrete examples of this). But with RDA, I still have a lot of misgivings and remain skeptical. I'd like to withhold final judgment until the RDA preliminary alpha and beta testing are complete and the results published and critiqued.

RDA's vagueness still leaves me ill at ease and in some ways seems almost to run against the logic of FRBR. In some ways, after it was explained to us, it seemed--at least to me--that SOME existing AACR2r2 practices come closer to the FRBR ideals than RDA does. I remain perplexed, sad to say.

It was worth attending this pre-conference, by all means, but I was disappointed by the actual delivery. Like I said, too much time spent on theory and rah-rah, not enough time on the demo, on concrete examples, and on implementation recommendations and planning. It's all so @#@$%! speculative still.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. Interestingly, Aggie Librarian got to sit next to an actual Texas A&M main campus cataloger who was very nice and amiable. Quite pretty, too. I learned that TAMUG personnel are a back in Galveston and no longer in B/CS. So it seems they got back to Pelican Island on schedule. Well, good for them. I also heard that budgets are tightening at TAMU (as expected) and that most catalogers these days are focusing on archival materials, which is more or less the same story for me up in Denton, since, as with my TAMU colleagues, it's the main source of original cataloging that we have on hand to deal with. Unlike them, I still pitch in to do plenty my own copy-cataloging and re-cataloging, too. But thank goodness for unique archival materials to keep our skills sharp.

Copyright, Copyfight

One of my favorite tags on BoingBoing.net is "copyfight". I religiously follow all BoingBoing blog posts tagged with this. It's a topic I care about passionately, even if I don't always fully understand it and always feel like I'm playing catch-up.

As much as the Aggie Librarian hates to admit it, he stumbled into a copyright boo-boo when enthusiastically digitizing and uploading an old video yeabook project done by his High School graduating class of 1989. Being silly kids, of course they just added whatever audio content they wanted, mostly popular music of the reining Zeitgeist. It was a video made by friends, for friends, it was never intended for world-wide distribution. Enter the Internet, and the digital conversion of raw VHS footage into editible and uploadable .mwv format, and throw in social networking sites like YouTube and Facebook.

Long story short, my offending videos got yanked--eventually. MySpace is far and above the most rigorous; Facebook found the offending content eventually, and found it again when I tried using a non-descript title and vague caption description. YouTube took by far the longest to locate and disable the same video. MySpace notified me of my error immediately, as did Facebook, when they finally took action. YouTube, most distressingly, disable the video without so much as a peep...not an email, not a comment, nothing. It took me awhile to realize that video wasn't showing up on my channel and go digging for it and find out what the issue was (well, I kinda figured what it would be, but...); Anyway, I found it--this takedown must have been awhile back because current YouTube practice has been modified; now, YouTube will merely disable the audio, leaving you with a silent movie. This was kind of crappy, but at least you could, in theory, record your own voiceover commentary or something.

I had read only in passing about YouTube's "Audio Swap" functionality and assumed it meant you could use it to record a lame-ass voiceover or something and didn't investigate further. When YouTube finally disabled my offending video, I investigated the Audio Swap option because YouTube presented it to me as the only way I could get my video reposted again on my channel. Fine, I said, and clicked on the button.

I was surprised how sophisticated the choices were for Audio Swap. In short order I found a peppy Pop tune that I could use legally as a substitute audio for my video. Since the video contained lots of images of senior prom, I chose a song called "Beautiful People", since this seemed apt; a lot of the girls who went to my High School and were featured in the video were indeed hot. It wasn't the 80s classic tune that was our Class/Prom Theme song, but since that was under copyright and since the licensing fees to use it were outrageously expensive, the generic pop tune was the best compromise I could reach.

I soon realized that the "Audio Swap" functionality could be used for ANY video I had uploaded, not just my one posting with a copyright violation. I had a lot of content that was long and frankly not very interesting from an audio standpoint. I was involved in NJROTC in High School, and my mom videotaped a lot of our events, which I have subsequently digitized. Basically it is of our Male Armed Drill Team marching around doing Exhibition Drill, different meet after meet. If you can hear the commander at all (assuming he's not drowned out by construction equipment, or high winds), all you here is standard military cadence, and the relevant commands given to execute each move. It's interesting maybe the first 2 times you watch, but after you've seen one and enjoyed its nostalgia value, that's about it by way of interest.

I realized I needed to kick these videos up a notch, as the Cajun chefs say. I decided I needed music with a driving beat; I experimented with both Heavy Metal and Dance Electronica/Techno samples from YouTube's vast generic music files. YouTube lets you preview and sample various selections before finally picking on your ideal choice, so you can pick just the right music to synch up with the on-screen action. Once you've made your match, you click on a button to swap out the original audio for the music, and within an hour or so the audio conversion is done and you've got your newly minted music video...your image content happily married to YouTube-kosher audio content.

Of course, the coolest aspect of all this is the fact that of course none of this audio content was just created ex nihilo. No, these are pieces of music composed and performed by small, up-and-coming indy bands. They clearly enter into a special contract with YouTube to grant limited license use of their material for its customers; In return, YouTube supplies an automatic link to iTunes for viewers of the video to go and purchase the song if they like what they hear. YouTube does this automatically and the owner of the video content doesn't have to do anything, it's an automatic (required) feature of the "Swap Audio" feature.

What is hilarious about this is that newer bands are reaping the benefits of a new market that older, "established" musicians and mainstream record labels have stupidly priced themselves out of completely. This generic music isn't famous, but I'll tell you, it's not bad either...it's actually reasonable quality stuff and I really have enjoyed sampling the various tracks trying to find that perfect fit between my visual content and the audio content on offer. I feel like a professional videographer doing this sh*t. It's way cool. It gives the new band lots of exposure, and lets them "go viral" easily. If a lot of YouTube users like their stuff and use their music over and over in their home movies, the tunes will prove catchy and people will buy their downloads and CDs and forget about/bypass the major record labels with their old business models built on traditional, highly restrictive copyright. It's a win-win, it's a beautiful free market solution to a stupid situation that warms the heart even of this crusty old socialist.

Maybe someday the big stupid dinosaurs like the RIAA will catch on and start offering their content for limited online use at something like a reasonable rate...say twice the cost of a regular internet download on iTunes for limited exclusive use of their audio content on 1 social networking site at a time, just click a little paypal-type button and you're done. Hell, I ended up buying a digital copy of that mainstream tune that got yanked from my original video because I remembered how much I loved the song.

Some progressive recording artists are surrendering to the inevitable and creating their own free YouTube channels, like Billy Joel. He knows people want his content, so fine, he just puts it out there on his channel...not everything, but enough to hook you in.

The Audio Swap option, created as a lawsuit dodge alternative by YouTube is a compromise; You don't get the stuff you hear on the radio that everyone knows and has known for the past 30-40 years...but in exchange you get new and innovative stuff that NOBODY knows about but will positively LOVE once they hear it. I'm serious! My "view" counters on ALL my videos with "swapped" music audio have spiked since I successfully completed the swaps. People love this! It makes my videos more interesting and watchable, and it gives the bands in question great viral exposure to a wider audience that would otherwise not have been possible through more traditional means. It runs counterintuitively to the way copyright is supposed to work and protect artists and I absolutely love that.

Don't get me wrong, even these generic bands should have the right to sue the pants off of other bands that pirate their stuff and pass it off as their own. That's just not cool...unless they improve on it and do it better than you then hey, sucks to be you. Like people complaining about how Maldroid ripped off from Joy Division to do "He Said, She Said". And I'm like, so frickin' what? Maldroid did it better, end of story. Their song is just plain a better song, more listenable, etc. Joy Division has street cred, they've been around way longer and became the basis for New Order, yada yada, but on that one song, I'm sorry dude, but Maldroid wins it.

There is still a place and a role for copyright. I hate that the Japanese anime industry is suffering because of hacker fansubs that undercut their product; it also takes money from dedicated English dub actors, who are very cool people--definitely a bummer and not a cool thing to do. The Japanese studios should sue the crap out of the unscrupulous pirates. I love that they're doing more adult/mature content these days but maybe they need to re-diversify and capture back some of the kid market as well, to have solid footing. We adult Otaku love our stuff alright, but they need to keep their audience base wide and diverse to stay viable. Catering exclusively to Geekdom is a path to ruin, I'm sad to say.

Anyway, I've been eager to blog about this since last night; finally to commit this to writing.

FRBR really is FUBAR

I attended an informal local workshop on RDA this morning, and now I can more clearly say what I long suspected; FRBR is FUBAR, from the bottom up. I better understand now that FRBR is sort of Platonist in its view of the bibliographic universe, which explains my almost instinctual inherent dislike for it, since I myself am undoubtedly much more Aristotelian (and materialist) in my Outlook. FRBR insists on a Platonic Form-like Abstraction called "The Work", which then filters down from there to Expression, to Manifestation, to Item. As a good Aristotelian, I junk all this higher "form" nonsense out the window and start with as my starting point the real object in my hand or before my eyes, which can be apprehended by my six human senses. That's been the basis of cataloging recorded information for over a century. What good is an abstraction like "The Work" anyway, that isn't already adequately addressed by the feature of Uniform Title in AACR2r2? (answer: none)

One is struck by the irony that the name Resource Description and Access was chosen over AACR3 because the intent was to make it more "international" in scope, less explicitly "Anglo-American" in name; And yet by replacing standardized Latin abbreviations and other notation in AACR2r2 with full English phrases, RDA is in actual content far MORE "Anglo-American" than even the AACR2r2 it seeks to supersede.

I also find it laughable that bad RDA structure and bad writing can be excused with "but it's supposed to be hyper-linked online!", or that it will be better than the version of AACR2r2 that currently comes bundled with Cataloger's Desktop, pooh-poohed as "not user friendly". Fine, that's a programming issue that you can fix without revamping the entire cataloging code. Same with the abbreviations; a vendor could tweak programming to allow a user to "mouse over" those abbreviations and get a fuller explanation if the need it...the full latin words spelled out plus an English gloss (or other language depending on the main users' language needs) for the same. This can already be done in OCLC records to identify libraries by their 3 digit codes, and I'm sure an OPAC vendor could incorporate the same or similar technology.

Supposedly RDA is superior to AACR2r2 at handling electronic resources, but I've yet to see a compelling example that I find convincing. I laughed out loud and said aloud twice "this is supposed to be an improvement!?" The haphazard structure of RDA compared to the clean orderliness of AACR2r2 is simply laughable.

The lecturer today predicted that with RDA implementation we might expect 5-6 years of "happy chaos" before things settle down again. In other circles, this is colloquially known as nothing short of a revolution. It's the kind of comment that makes me want to grip my copy of AACR2r2, dig in my heels, and say, all Charleton Heston like "From My Cold Dead Hands!!"

But then, I'm a Texan...and we always like to re-fight the hopeless battles like the Siege at the Alamo. Though sometimes we win our San Jacintos against all odds, too.

But at bottom, it's the inherent Platonism of FRBR, which underlies RDA, that I have my issue with. There's no such thing as "The Work" in the abstract...and some FRBR proponents and theorists even agree with me on this point. Where we disagree is whether this abstraction is even useful or not. To the FRBR folks, it is. To me, it isn't. All that exists are individual, particular items. We build and share our cataloging upon that. Even Homer's Odyssey, in the original Greek, is based on some particular surviving manuscript *somewhere*, not just floating out in the ether somewhere. We deal in the subset of RECORDED information within the total information universe. If it's not recorded on some medium of some kind, it's irrelevant to us. Relationships are already established and traced in AACR2r2 by means of Uniform Titles, which are controlled and can be referenced. Restructuring via FRBR yields know advantages that I can think of, and is so vague and subjective it isn't "Functional" at all but rather Dysfunctional. DRBR is closer to the truth, if FRBR is forced on libraries. Dysfunctional Requirements for Bibliophile Rubes.

Oh, and the obligatory cheer-leading for the Death of MARC at the end of the talk that is of course par for the course. Ok, sure, maybe MARCxml will be a useful next step, but I don't see the core MARC standard ever going away completely. Just too cost prohibitive to shift on a worldwide scale.

These speakers even admitted that cost consideration was not within their purview. Well, ok, but somebody DOES need to consider that before going forward with implementation of this dreck. These decisions do have financial implications that aren't to be made lightly.

I left the workshop wholly unconvinced of the necessity of RDA, with a deeper understanding of its philosophical errors, and a more robust appreciation for AACR2r2. I remain a hopeless, book-bound Neo-Luddite on these matters, I suppose.
It provides some measure of comfort that my take on this is basically in line with senior catalogers on AUTOCAT whose opinions I hold in the highest regard but who are also largely ignored by the Joint Steering Committee, more or less.

I'm all happy for the info scientists to go develop new metadata standards for their precious electronic resources and digital images and whatsits...where I draw the line is when they go dicking around with the bibliographic control of monographs that is tried, true and tested and does not need to be f*cked with. First, do no harm, as another profession puts it. FRBR will actively wreak havoc and turn centuries old cataloging principles on their heads, and so will RDA.

For now, best to just batten down the hatches and ride out the storm. I think the other side will collapse from their own hubris and internal contradictions, but there's no guarantee. It may take an outside influence, like an energy crisis, to shock enough library leaders into reconsidering the all-digital future pipe dream.
Only time will tell.

That's all I've got for now, Aggie Librarian over and out.