Final Thoughts

Tonight I handed in my final exam. All 10 pages. As the clock neared midnight, the deadline. It was a pretty taxing affair, drawing on and synthesizing older knowledge, and unexpectedly requiring the gathering of new information.

What I mean by that last statement is that one of the requirements of the exam was to read my classmates' research papers and summarize the issues they wrote about. Since I had already covered MARC vs. XML, I was relegated to reading up on RDA and FRBR (love those acronymns!) So, basically, FRBR is a conceptual model theorized to make bibliographic searching more efficient by collocating subjects, creators, and the various manifestations of works. The idea is to focus on relationships between all of these items, rather than seeing them in an individual sense. RDA is the revamped AACR3, which is the revamped AACR2r. Except RDA now includes FRBR, where AACR3 did not. As a result, it is said that RDA is better suited to meet the demands of the digital environment (you can tell how many times I've read such statements). Apparently both proposals have been met with mixed support. What seems clear to me is that these concepts are becoming frantic attempts to salvage cataloging and libraries as we know them.

Beside the essay component, the final exam required the construction of three MARC records. Completing that portion, it became obvious that there are still some minor details I'm unclear on (speaking of which, I think I just noticed I forgot a 1xx tag in one of the records. Great.). Multiple authors and additional creators have been tripping me up. Must additional creators (illustrators, producers, etc.) be listed in 245 and 700 tags? Can they be listed in 245 and 700 tags if they aren't listed in 1xx tags? Why is it a big deal of a spell out the entire place of publication rather than using a state abbreviation?

All in all, I'm not feeling very good about my final. The exam came on the heels of some pretty exhaustive assignments and papers, as well as my wife's birthday weekend (which necessitated a day trip to New Orleans and the weekend visitation of my mother from out of town). Looking over my MARC work, I decided to go literally with the EasyMarc text, lecture notes, and prior work rather than with my gut (which has served me well in the past). It may be my downfall, but there were so many connected issues that I felt I was damned if I did and damned if I didn't. And those classification and cutter numbers... ouch.

Just hope my overall grade can absorb any blows that my exam takes.