I receive messages off list from those who do not wish to suffer the ridicule I receive onlist. Having had cigarettes put out in my hair during the civil rights sit-ins, and bomb threats due to a Black house guest, my skin is thicker than most. One correspondent (who does wish to be named) wrote: > ...I share your misgivings. "I also suspect that, as with RDA, the die is cast and there is too much invested, and too many faces to be saved, to halt the runaway train. " ... I have seen nothing that could not be accommodated within MARC, and better input/edit screens would facilitate it all. (Not that our system vendors help us, for the most part!) And I suspect far too fine granularity, for no good purpose I can imagine in many cases ("editor of work" for heaven's sake?! and that's the least). "It may be labeled a consultative process, but it's not much more so than the national budget: the 'government' has its plans, and divergence is very small. "The outcome is likely to be a management backlash and a retreat to something like Dublin Core, I fear. 'Even if this is worthwhile, we have to put our slender funds into resources, not ultra-detailed cataloguing" is already heard (or worse). Administrators have less to do with the resources and the catalogue than the reference librarians we're hearing freely criticized. "I hope I'm largely wrong, of course. But I fear I'm fairly right." My e-correspondence indicates that this disaffection is fairly common. Whether it is a silent majority or not I do not know, but there is a considerable gap between the fancy new car engineers and many prospective drivers. The progression from the red/green books, to AACR, to AACR2, to RDA, zx as well as adoption of MARC. all produced concern, but nothing to compare with what I am hearing/reading now. The new car engineers need to learn to communiaate in more accessible language, and define acronymns at first use. After the third unknown acronym, most just tune out. __ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod ([log in to unmask]) {__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/ ___} |__ \__________________________________________________________