Comments on: Toward Standards 2.0 http://freerangelibrarian.com/2007/11/15/toward-standards-20/ K.G. Schneider's blog on librarianship, writing, and everything else Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:59:46 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.1 By: The Future of Standards « Adventures in the Wild West Library Frontier http://freerangelibrarian.com/2007/11/15/toward-standards-20/comment-page-1/#comment-125487 The Future of Standards « Adventures in the Wild West Library Frontier Fri, 14 Dec 2007 22:58:54 +0000 http://freerangelibrarian.com/2007/11/15/toward-standards-20/#comment-125487 [...] cataloging, library2.0, standards The Free Range Librarian recently had an interesting post about “Standards 2.0″ in librarianship.  Obviously “2.0″ has become a catch-phrase for any forward-looking [...] [...] cataloging, library2.0, standards The Free Range Librarian recently had an interesting post about “Standards 2.0″ in librarianship.  Obviously “2.0″ has become a catch-phrase for any forward-looking [...]

]]> By: FRBR imperfect? So then? « Bibliographic Wilderness http://freerangelibrarian.com/2007/11/15/toward-standards-20/comment-page-1/#comment-111342 FRBR imperfect? So then? « Bibliographic Wilderness Wed, 28 Nov 2007 15:57:59 +0000 http://freerangelibrarian.com/2007/11/15/toward-standards-20/#comment-111342 [...] practice so we can learn what the issues are, and work to resolve them. We need to get away from the idea that any kind of standard can somehow be produced in isolation from practice in one monolit... and then never be returned [...] [...] practice so we can learn what the issues are, and work to resolve them. We need to get away from the idea that any kind of standard can somehow be produced in isolation from practice in one monolit… and then never be returned [...]

]]> By: K.G. Schneider http://freerangelibrarian.com/2007/11/15/toward-standards-20/comment-page-1/#comment-95802 K.G. Schneider Fri, 16 Nov 2007 01:24:08 +0000 http://freerangelibrarian.com/2007/11/15/toward-standards-20/#comment-95802 Very good, Jonathan! Very good, Jonathan!

]]> By: Jonathan Rochkind http://freerangelibrarian.com/2007/11/15/toward-standards-20/comment-page-1/#comment-95606 Jonathan Rochkind Thu, 15 Nov 2007 22:11:53 +0000 http://freerangelibrarian.com/2007/11/15/toward-standards-20/#comment-95606 The best standards come _out_ of practice. You have a bunch of people trying different things, and experimenting. After a bit of this, you look at what happened, and you abstract and generalize out the best of what happened, and make it into a standard. This way your standard was actually based on practice, and a certain kind of evidence. Compare this to what we do in the library world all too often. "No, we can't try that, it violates the standards!" "No, there's no reason to do that, it's not standard." "Once the standard comes out, THEN we'll have a way to do that." So standards can't be based on best practices, because there are no practices to decide what's best---we're all waiting for the standards people to tell us. And waiting. And waiting. And then we expect the standards people to give us a gigantic document covering all possible cases that will never need to be revised---which is NOT based on what worked in the field, because nobody was working in the field, but is instead invented whole cloth by the standards people! No wonder it doesn't work. The best standards come _out_ of practice. You have a bunch of people trying different things, and experimenting. After a bit of this, you look at what happened, and you abstract and generalize out the best of what happened, and make it into a standard. This way your standard was actually based on practice, and a certain kind of evidence.

Compare this to what we do in the library world all too often. “No, we can’t try that, it violates the standards!” “No, there’s no reason to do that, it’s not standard.” “Once the standard comes out, THEN we’ll have a way to do that.” So standards can’t be based on best practices, because there are no practices to decide what’s best—we’re all waiting for the standards people to tell us. And waiting. And waiting. And then we expect the standards people to give us a gigantic document covering all possible cases that will never need to be revised—which is NOT based on what worked in the field, because nobody was working in the field, but is instead invented whole cloth by the standards people!

No wonder it doesn’t work.

]]> By: Aaron Tan http://freerangelibrarian.com/2007/11/15/toward-standards-20/comment-page-1/#comment-95273 Aaron Tan Thu, 15 Nov 2007 16:12:52 +0000 http://freerangelibrarian.com/2007/11/15/toward-standards-20/#comment-95273 Great post! I just want to add that the standardization process is highly political and the best technical standard doesn't always win. This leaves us with competing standards for the same thing in some situations. In web services, we've had OASIS vs W3C. Just when we thought we had OpenDocument sorted out, Microsoft pushes for its OpenXML to be ratified as an ISO standard. It never ends, and users will be the ones losing out. Great post! I just want to add that the standardization process is highly political and the best technical standard doesn’t always win. This leaves us with competing standards for the same thing in some situations. In web services, we’ve had OASIS vs W3C. Just when we thought we had OpenDocument sorted out, Microsoft pushes for its OpenXML to be ratified as an ISO standard. It never ends, and users will be the ones losing out.

]]> By: G Facincani http://freerangelibrarian.com/2007/11/15/toward-standards-20/comment-page-1/#comment-95183 G Facincani Thu, 15 Nov 2007 14:34:49 +0000 http://freerangelibrarian.com/2007/11/15/toward-standards-20/#comment-95183 The user comes first? Heresy. The user comes first? Heresy.

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