Today was the first session of the JSC meeting. The morning was taken up with an Executive Session. The afternoon was devoted to a series of general comments on the full draft of RDA and to the first part of a discussion of the General Introduction (Chapter 0).
Before reporting on decisions made, let me outline the parameters for this meeting. First, this will be our final opportunity to make changes to the text of RDA before the first release. At the end of the meeting, the Editor will have from one to eight weeks (depending on the nature of the changes) to deliver marked-up PDF files to the developers. All changes must be agreed to during this meeting (i.e., by the end of our session on Friday, March 20); after that, we will only be able to correct outright errors.
Second, we will only be able to deal with priority comments from the constituency responses. We have identified those comments; there are about 400 of them. So far, we seem to be a bit ahead of schedule, but we are not at all certain that we can deal with all the priority comments. Any comments not considered by the JSC will have to be dealt with after the initial release of RDA.
General comments on the full draft
Decisions included:
Chapter 0. General Introduction
The following decisions were made:
Before reporting on decisions made, let me outline the parameters for this meeting. First, this will be our final opportunity to make changes to the text of RDA before the first release. At the end of the meeting, the Editor will have from one to eight weeks (depending on the nature of the changes) to deliver marked-up PDF files to the developers. All changes must be agreed to during this meeting (i.e., by the end of our session on Friday, March 20); after that, we will only be able to correct outright errors.
Second, we will only be able to deal with priority comments from the constituency responses. We have identified those comments; there are about 400 of them. So far, we seem to be a bit ahead of schedule, but we are not at all certain that we can deal with all the priority comments. Any comments not considered by the JSC will have to be dealt with after the initial release of RDA.
General comments on the full draft
Decisions included:
- We decided to use the phrase "authorized access point" instead of "preferred access point"; we will continue to use "preferred title".
- We decided to use the phrase "character string" instead of "alphanumeric string".
- We decided that instructions on recording details about an element -- as opposed to recording a term or terms -- will be given as separate instructions; in the full draft this was done in Chapter 7, but not in Chapter 3.
- The centered captions for groups of elements will be reinstated, but will not display in the contents pane.
- Additional CJK examples will not be added for the first release; in fact, we have been informed that the first release will not be able to include any CJK examples.
- Footnotes containing definitions will be replaced by links to Glossary; footnotes containing instructions will be moved into the text; the only remainint footnotes will be those giving bibliographic citations.
Chapter 0. General Introduction
The following decisions were made:
- "human and non-human" will be deleted from definition of person; this leaves person defined as an individual, and users of RDA will need to decide whether this includes non-human individuals; at this stage, there will be no specific instructions (or examples) for access points for non-human individuals, so users of RDA will need to decide whether to apply the general instructions to non-human individuals. RDA will not forbid this practice, but will (at this point) do nothing to support it. [0.3.3, line 16]
- The JSC noted that the principles of Representation and of Language Preference, as they are used in RDA are not in fact consistent, but no more so than other conflicting principles. One action that reduces this inconsistency somewhat was to remove the phrase "(in order of preference)" from the third paragraph of 0.4.3.4. [lines 25, 28, 29]
- Core elements: The JSC decided that when sub-elements are included in the list of core elements, both the element and the sub-element should be identified as core. [line 35]
- The instructions for recording core elements will say that the element should be included if applicable "and readily ascertainable." [0.6.1; line 39]
- Devised title will not be considered a formal element sub-type. When the cataloguer must supply a title proper, the devised title is the title proper. [line 40]
- Place of Publication, Place of Distribution, and Place of Manufacture will be added to the list of core elements. [0.6.2; line 44]
Discussion on the General Introduction will continue on Friday.
- The core requirement for subject relationships will be simply to record one subject relationship element for the work. The list of potential subject entities will be removed from 0.6.7 [line 68]
Note: The line numbers given above are to the response table for the full draft; I have included them for my own tracking purposes. Please ignore.
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