Faceted Application of Subject Terminology Book

FAST: Faceted Application of Subject Terminology: Principles and Application by Lois Mai Chan and Edward T. O'Neill is due to be published soon.

While The Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) is perhaps the best known bibliographic control system in existence, it is cumbersome and not always user friendly. Faceted Application of Subject Terminology (or FAST) is designed to rework LCSH's authority rules, so that they are easier to use, understand, and apply. The result is a schema designed to handle a large volume of materials with less effort and cost. To this end, two members of the original design team have put together numerous examples of FAST-driven projects including traditional monographs, special collections (archives, business records), electronic resources, and web sites. The result is a prototype designed to be used not just by experienced catalogers but people with minimal training and experience.

Changing to the New Rules

The ALISE Conference has made available the talks about changing from the old rules to AACR. I've just finished listening to them and found them all interesting. Well worth a listen.

• Introduction by Karen Snow and Gretchen Hoffman
• Michael Gorman's Presentation
• Janet Swan Hill's Presentation
• Arlene Taylor's Presentation
• Question and Answer Session

A more recent change would be Germany's libraries moving from MAB to AACR. That might make an interesting follow-up.

Yesterday's Concerns

Yesterday I posted about my concerns about basing RDA on an model based on relational databases. That has started some of the best weblog reading I've had in quite some time. Read the comments responding to my question. Then go to Bibliographic Wilderness and read the post by Jonathan Rochkind and the comments left there. Time well spent.

Cultural Objects Name Authority Webinar

A webinar on the Cultural Objects Name Authority has been announced.

The Museum Computer Network (MCN), Gallery Systems, and the J. Paul Getty Trust are pleased to offer a free Webinar on a new vocabulary under development, the Cultural Objects Name Authority™ (CONA).

"Introducing the Getty’s new Cultural Objects Name Authority™ (CONA)" Tuesday, May 4, 2010 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM EDT

The Cultural Objects Name Authority™ (CONA) is a new Getty vocabulary currently under development. It is scheduled for introduction to the contributor community in 2011. CONA will join the other three Getty vocabularies, the Art & Architecture Thesaurus® (AAT), the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names® (TGN), and the Union List of Artist Names® (ULAN), as a tool for cataloging and retrieval of art information. CONA will contain titles, current location, and other core information for cultural works. The scope of CONA will include architecture and movable works such as paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, manuscripts, photographs, ceramics, textiles, furniture, and archaeological artifacts. Murtha Baca, Head of Digital Art History Access at the Getty Research Institute, and Patricia Harpring, Managing Editor of the Getty Vocabulary Program, will present an introduction to CONA and will be available for questions.

FRBR a Dead End?

Image via Wikipedia

Just back from the Texas Library Conference (TxLA10), lots to digest and process from several very busy, long days.

One thing that hit me over the head was that FRBR might be a poor model for our data. A speaker said that the object-entity model was based on relational databases. Well, relational databases have been the tool we used for the past 25 years or better. However, they might not be the tool we use in the near future. RDF triples, topic maps, and other tools seem to be where we are heading. Away from relational databases in any event. In ten years will we be saying of RDA, since it is based on a relational database model, the same things we say of AACR since it is based on a card model?