Am 11.01.2012 21:18, schrieb Diane Hillmann:
> I've sure been there, too, wishing there were good ways to figure out
> who did what in a MARC record!
When I hear "provenance" and "who did what?" the obvious solution seems
to be version control to me (now writing as a software developer).
In software development, especially in distributed scenarios (with many
contributors, like open source software development), this basic
requirement exists as well: Who contributed or changed what, when and
why? Hmmm, sounds a bit like "cataloguing" (or more general: managing
library data), doesn't it?
In software development that problem is well solved, by automatic
version control systems. And software development wouldn't work without.
These systems come in different styles and flavours and support
different version control scenarios (like centralised, strict or
distributed, loose approaches), and are even interoperable to a certain
extent (eg. subversion and git and bazaar).
So, instead of adding complexity to library data and the creation of it,
wouldn't an automatic(!) version control mechanism for be nice? The
requirements for managing library data might not be completely met by
existing version control tools (especially with "merge" operations), but
still it might be worth looking at them and at least learning from the
concepts. I mean, these systems are used for distributed, collaborative
management of quite big amounts of quickly changing data in big
communities. Sounds a bit like cataloguing, doesn't it?
Just my 0,02 Euro,
Till Kinstler
--
Till Kinstler
Verbundzentrale des Gemeinsamen Bibliotheksverbundes (VZG)
Platz der Göttinger Sieben 1, D 37073 Göttingen
[log in to unmask], +49 (0) 551 39-13431, http://www.gbv.de
|