CC:DA/OLAC/2016/1
June 6, 2016
Addition of new controlled vocabulary for 3.19.6 Regional Encoding
Submitted by: Kelly McGrath, OLAC Liaison
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agenda ALA2012 ALA2013 ALA2014 ALA2015 ALA2016 ALA proposal Annual 2012 Annual 2013 Annual 2014 Annual 2015 Behrens Bourassa British Library Canadian Committee on Cataloguing Chair's report corporate bodies Dunsire Glennan Iseminger JSC JSC rep Lapka Library of Congress McGrath Midwinter 2012 Midwinter 2013 Midwinter 2014 Midwinter 2016 minutes music Music Working Group (JSC) Myers NARDAC OLAC PCC RDA Rendall Reser response Robare Rolla RSC Shrader SnyderLinks
It seems to me that there is a tension between those who want RDA to be a massive, all encompassing set of instructions, and those who want RDA to be relatively sleek, with the nitty gritty details residing in application profiles and the like. This reminds me of the “big Hall” vs. “small Hall” debate for the MLB Hall of Fame.
Should this level of detail be in RDA or in an external controlled vocabulary? I agree with the background of the proposal that consistency of language is the proper goal — but what is the best way to get there?
It appears to me that for every other instruction in chapter 3 where it is possible to create a controlled vocabulary, RDA includes a controlled vocabulary. I’m not sure why regional encoding should be an exception unless there is a general move to use external vocabularies..
I’m confused by the language of the instruction: “Regional encoding is a code…” Is this referring to the “code” as in software on the resource that talks to the players and says “I’m Region 1?” Or is it “code” as in shorthand codes in the metadata that could be displayed to users in different ways? For example, the code “R1” could display as “Region 1 (DVD video).”
agree here also; this appears to be a circular definition
That was the existing definition and it does seem to have two possible readings. I think I ended up thinking that it meant code in terms of a label identifying the region that was encoded, but I agree the definition could be improved. We had enough trouble with the rest of the proposal and only changed the definition to expand it to non-video disc carriers.
Are the definitions for “Region 1 (video game), Region 2 (video game), Region 3 (video game), Region 4 (video game)” supposed to be identical?
Yes. We could not find an authoritative source for what exactly those regions cover. I don’t catalog video games and I’m not a gamer so this only comes from research. The numbered regions appear only to apply to Playstation (I found only two exceptions in WorldCat that weren’t games on DVD videodiscs and those are likely errors). Playstation games themselves are actually region-free, but the associated downloadable content and some other functions are region-restricted. I think the numbered game regions may be co-extensive with the DVD videodisc regions, but as I said, we couldn’t find an authoritative source for this. However, these do appear on the games so catalogers want to record them.
I’m fairly confident that the RSC will not approve identical definitions for different terms.
We also will have to propose these terms without showing them defined under a particular resource type (DVD, video game, etc.). So, they need to make sense outside of this context.
It is awkward at best to propose a controlled vocabulary for an area where there’s a lack of industry-wide standardization. How important is it to define regions 1-4 for video games?
Let me see what I can do. The video game catalogers did want that because it appears on some games and it’ll be confusing if it’s not in the list.
I’m not sure what you mean by not defining them “under a particular resource type.” They only have meaning in the context of particular resource types.
Right. I think the definitions are clear enough (since they mention Blu-ray, DVD, etc.), but the presentation in this paper is grouped by carrier type. In a final RSC proposal, the Glossary terms will need to be presented in a single alphabetical list.
Gotcha. I think we just had that way because it was easier to track, but we can rearrange them.
I agree with Robert’s first point; this will all have to be updated in RDA as regional encoding changes.
I think it’s unlikely very many, if any, new physical formats with regional encoding will be developed. The video region codes have been stable since they’ve been implemented and we hope that we have defined the video game ones in general enough terms that they won’t need to be revised. So I don’t anticipate much maintenance for this list.
If we go forward with this proposal, is there a problem if the terms are not capitalized (e.g., “region 0”, “no regional encoding”)? I assume we would keep the capital letters associated with the regional encoding (e.g., “region U/C”, “region J”).
If capitalization is important, we’ll need to explain why, since it goes against the Glossary conventions.
Capitalization is not important.
And Kelley, thanks for your further consultation with video game experts. I’m wondering if we can get to a solution with controlled vocabulary (where industry standards exist) along with the opportunity to record the “uncontrolled” terms (maybe in a “details of” type of approach).