[DCRM-L] OCLC: Incorporating RDA practices into WorldCat

[Deborah J. Leslie]

Ted, that's a really good question. Up until now, rare materials catalogers as a group--through the mechanism of the RBMS Technical Services Discussion Group at ALA meetings--had decided that we could unapologetically replace an OCLC master record with a dcrm record. But now that we're on the cusp of RDA, and it will be several years before the first DCRM manual based on RDA will be ready, that's a separate question worth considering.

As far as converting to RDA, what we need to prevent is *machine* editing of descriptive fields in dcrm records based on an OCLC algorithm. There was a horror story some years ago, when as a "quality control" process, all edition statements in all records that had "edition" spelled out were replaced with "ed." In a single swoop, all those bdrb and dcrb records were irretrievably corrupted. Humans who want to update, can, but in this interim, there can be no legitimate double coding of records as RDA *and* dcrm.

There's a task group of Bibliographic Standards that is studying the issue of DCRM in the light of RDA, and that is one question we may address.

In re-reading your letter, however, it sounds like you're taking records with AACR2 description, adding extra notes and headings, and coding them dcrmb. If so, re-read DCRM(B) Appendix A, which governs under what conditions a record may be coded dcrmb.

Deborah J. Leslie, M.A., M.L.S. | Head of Cataloging, Folger Shakespeare Library | 201 East Capitol St., S.E. | Washington, D.C. 20003
djleslie at folger.edu | 202.675-0369 | http://www.folger.edu


-----Original Message-----
From: dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu] On Behalf Of Ted P Gemberling
Sent: Friday, 27 April 2012 13:09
To: 'DCRM Revision Group List'
Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] OCLC: Incorporating RDA practices into WorldCat

Deborah,
Your comment made me wonder about something. I often take what I think is the best (or maybe for me the most convenient) record, add subject headings, signatures, and other things that will be useful to other libraries, code it as dcrmb, and replace the record. But if what you are suggesting is done, records with that coding will not be converted to RDA later. Am I being unkind to people at other libraries by making something dcrmb, thereby adding Roman numeral dates and so forth? If OCLC can't convert dcrmb records to RDA format, will that lead us in the direction of creating original DCRM(b) records every time we want something to be DCRM(b)?

I'm sorry if this subject has been addressed before.

Thanks,
Ted Gemberling
UAB Lister Hill Library
(205)934-2461

-----Original Message-----
From: dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu] On Behalf Of Deborah J. Leslie
Sent: Friday, April 27, 2012 10:02 AM
To: 'DCRM Revision Group List'
Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] OCLC: Incorporating RDA practices into WorldCat

Thanks, Will; I hadn't seen it (and notice it's too late for comments).

Given that OCLC is contemplating making global changes based on RDA provisions, it is all the more necessary for records encoded 'bdrb', 'dcrb', or 'dcrm' be exempted from such database massages.

Deborah J. Leslie, M.A., M.L.S. | Head of Cataloging, Folger Shakespeare Library | 201 East Capitol St., S.E. | Washington, D.C. 20003
djleslie at folger.edu | 202.675-0369 | http://www.folger.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu] On Behalf Of Will Evans
Sent: Friday, 27 April 2012 08:36
To: DCRM Revision Group List
Subject: [DCRM-L] OCLC: Incorporating RDA practices into WorldCat

Dear Colleagues,

FYI

http://www.oclc.org/au/en/rda/discussion.htm


Forgive me if this has been previously posted to the list.



Best,

Will



_______________________________________
Will Evans
Chief Rare Materials Catalog Librarian
Library of the Boston Athenaeum
10 1/2 Beacon Street
Boston, MA   02108

Tel:  617-227-0270 ext. 224
Fax: 617-227-5266
www.bostonathenaeum.org
_______________________________________