No evidence on bibliographic issues
Lorcan Dempsey makes a much overdue point:
In all the discussion about bibliographic data and catalogs, and about their advantages or disadvantages when compared to other approaches, it is striking how little appeal there is to actual evidence.
I've noticed this on email discussion lists where appeals are made to personal experience (of the librarian/cataloguer) and to how a user should use a catalogue, but rarely is this backed up by research as to how library users could use catalogues most intuitively and effectively and how they want to use catalogues to find material. I think this has profound implications for the cataloguing rules and OPAC design.
I expect the framers of RDA are using a wealth of such research data diligently compiled by the researchers at our library schools to compile the rules. With this much academic research behind us, Amazoogle doesn't stand a chance!
NON. SEPT. MMVII
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Tom