Re: [ARSCLIST] Cataloging question--IASA in particular

[Sam Brylawski <goodlistening@xxxxxxxxx>]

As a former head of an audio reading room: GMDs are invaluable in
getting around OPACs and cataloging which poorly differentiate sound
recordings in collections. Some OPACs allow you to limit searches to
"musical" or "non-musical" sound recording (from the 007?), but that's
confusing when searching the in-betweens, such as radio shows with
music content.

A Boolean 'AND "sound recordings"' (looking for the phrase in a GMD)
was our best search strategy to guarantee finding all audio in a
search. Since the GMD is a title field element, I believe that it
remains appropriate as well as useful to retain the use of "sound
recording" regardless of actual format, whether digital file or
tin-foil cylinder.

Sam

On 11/3/06, andy kolovos <akolovos@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> David--
>
> David Seubert wrote:
> > The IASA rules oddly don't address SMDs for digital files. I'd never
> > noticed this before, but they must have assumed that all sound had a
> > carrier of some sort. Not so anymore--record on hard disk or flash card,
> > upload audio to server, reuse media. So no carrier in the traditional
> > sense. For the SMD of a born digital audio file I think you'd need to
> > refer to AACR2 and follow the rules for computer files. I don't know if
> > you can use "1 digital audio file" or what without checking, but I'd
> > keep it in plain English if possible.
>
> I got two useful suggestions in this regard, both, interestingly, from
> folks at the LC--
>  From Thom Pease I learned that with some projects at MBRS they're using
> the following terms for cataloging digital preservation files from
> analog source in the MARC 300 field:
>
> ‡a 2 sound files (1 hr., 7 min., 51 sec.) : ‡b digital preservation
> master,WAV files (96 kHz, 24 bit)
>
> And from Maggie Kruesi at the American Folklife Center I got the
> suggestion of "digtial audio file" an SMD term.  I'm thinking I'm going
> to stick with "sound recording" as the GMD and then use, for example,
> "digital audio file (WAV)" as the SMD.  I'll specify bit depth/sample
> rate and other technical metadata in the database record.
>
> > I wonder if GMDs are going away with the transition from AACR2 to RDA?
> > GMDs are really pretty useless in my opinion. Material types should just
> > be coded in the leader and the computer system will figure out what the
> > heck it is and describe it to the user.
> >
>
> This is something that Maggie brought up as well.  My problems aren't
> directly related to LC cataloging, they've got more to do with trying to
> pin down a standard vocabulary for distinguishing between 1. the means
> of documentation (e.g.: sound recording, video recording, still
> photography) and 2. the medium on which this documentation is fixed
> (tape, disc, file) for the purpose of my internal database.  The GMD/SMD
> distinction pretty much fits the bill, and the associated SMD terms are
> useful for language standards.  So I'm just piggy backing on something
> that, as you note, might become totally irrelevant in a year or two.
>
> Thanks!
>
> andy
>
> --
>
> Andy Kolovos
> Archivist/Folklorist
> Vermont Folklife Center
> 3 Court Street ; P.O. Box 442
> Middlebury, VT 05753
> (802) 388-4964
> akolovos @ vermontfolklifecenter.org
> http://www.vermontfolklifecenter.org