While reading a post on Karen Coyle's blog about the antitrust lawsuit brought by SkyRiver/III against OCLC (an interesting topic, by the way), I somehow wandered into another post about the Knowledge Organization 2011 conference held in Norway last month.Coyle's discussion of the conference, at which she spoke, is interesting. At a wrap-up session on the first day, a day on which talks were given on RDA and linked data, an introduction to RDA , and a comparison of FRBR, FRAD and FRSAD, the audience came up with a list of "burning questions" which Coyle wrote down. They are:

• If not RDA, what else is there?
• Are things on hold waiting for RDA? Are people and vendors waiting to see what will happen?
• Why wasn't RDA simplified?
• How long will we pay for it?
• Will communities other than those in the JSC use it?
• Can others join JSC to make this a truly international code?
• Should we just forget about this library-specific stuff and use Dublin Core?

The second day featured talks on outside data which might be useful to libraries and the usefulness of library data outside the library once it is freed from MARC. I think these things are the prize we need to keep our eyes on as we suffer through the likely move to RDA -- the ability to move data which is not MARC from outside into our catalogs and from our catalogs out in to the world is what we hope to gain. Coyle closes her remarks on a hopeful note, saying:

As is often the case I was very impressed at the quality of experimentation that is taking place by people who really want to see library data transformed and made web-able. I think we are at the start of a new and highly fruitful phase for libraries.

Read the whole post here.