Re: [ARSCLIST] Cataloging sound recordings

[George Brock-Nannestad <pattac@xxxxxxxx>]

From: Patent Tactics, George Brock-Nannestad

The great, and perhaps only, strength of existing catalogues and cataloguing
systems is that they have been used by many. This makes them very difficult
to change, even though philosophy and modern technology would make it very
tempting. Look at the times proposals for revision of the piano keyboard were
proposed, based on reasonable grounds. Or our present staff notation!

However, there are two fundamental principles that need to be fulfilled, if
all the efforts up till now were to be regarded as an investment, which is
the proper way, and not expenditure.

The first principle is that we must agree on terminology: what is the proper
name of the category that we want to put a particular piece of information
into. Some information is self-evident to the specialist - the mere format of
it tells us what kind of information it is. But we need category definitions.

The second principle is that such categories must be linked to the
information - it is meta-data for the information. We used to talk about
"fields" in Information Science, and the nice thing is that as long as fields
are defined, we may import any table structure into a new table structure,
even if the old one is incomplete (by modern standards), as long as we
translate the existing fields into the correct new fields in the new set of
tables. There can be no problem of generating new fields that do not exist in
an established structure, as long as information does not get put into the
wrong categories. An old search system would simply just look for information
in a narrow set of fields and would only improve, because more material has
been entered. A new search system may also find entries based on new fields,
and so the improvement in performance will be both qualitative and
quantitative.

So, instead of bashing the old systems for their content, let us find ways to
translate their fields into new fields in new systems. Interactive entry
would automatically enter the various delimiters that are so typical of the
old systems. They were needed, because the logic to control the print codes
for the cards intended for searching was quite primitive. By all means, do
still use them, but get a better interface for entry.

Kind regards,


George