The Standards! There are too many!

I recently started back at the iSchool for my second semester of grad school. One down, two to go! Woot!

Anyway, I am taking a class on cataloging this semester, which is considered the "Holy Grail" of the Library and Information Science world. The inner workings of a library tends to revolve around cataloging books and items to be added to the library's collection. But what is most annoying about cataloging just happens to be the "standards." It goes something like this:

I'm sure that this applies to all fields of science, but this seems to be especially true in the Library and Information Science world. Just this morning, I was reading about a relatively new standard called "FRBR" or Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records, which seeks to make the rules for using certain terms in cataloging more concrete. I thought that they were concrete the way they were. 

And with every new standard comes confusion and arguments within the community. For example, we have been switching from AACR to AACR2, and now I hear that they are working on AACR3? I dunno, it seems like a huge rumor that may not even be true, but seriously? Why do we need so many standards? And then there's MARC. I hate MARC records because they are so arbitrary and difficult to read. I have to admit that it is helpful to learn out to read them but still... do we really need another standard for cataloging? 

So step back FRBR backers! Also STFU and GTFO because I am sick of all of these standards. Also, it makes library school a whole lot harder so STFU and GTFO and keep your new "standards" to yourself.