Night of the Ghouls

What, Dear Reader, could possibly be more redundantly Byzantine that a committee on committees, meeting just because a meeting room and time had been reserved, only to discuss the meeting schedule? Fear not! I am not going to address this, but rather the meetings of the Catalog Maintenace and Enrichment Team, of which I am a member. Several years ago we met weekly, at a set time, in a set place. We never met for the whole hour that was set aside. That which needed discussing was discussed, and the meeting was adjourned. One of these meetings lasted seven minutes. Joy! Our meeting schedule evolved and we were soon meeting monthly. Then the meetings became "imaginary," to quote our team leader. The reservation for the room was discontinued. I'd like to say we set about on a regimen of quarterly meetings, but I don't know if we met, or meet that frequently. It is a testament to the communication we enjoy as a work unit, not an expression of any disdain we may feel toward meetings in general. Well, we met last week. It was a good meeting. I took notes. For blog fodder. The general theme was "The Catalog of the Future." AACR2 morphing into RDA, and the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records, or FRBR. My pen raced when the term FRBRization was uttered. At first, I had vowels in the mix of the F, the B, and the R's. Imagine my delight when I learned there were no vowels! Anyway, and I will apologize in advance Dear Reader, for not fully grasping the concept, but it goes something like this: Begin with an individual work, or the idea, say Anna Karenina (not used by me as a password, by the way). The play, the movie, the screenplay, even the Cliff's Notes version, are all expressions of the original idea, each with its own intellectual content. Are you still with me? An individual printing of an expression is a manifestation of that original idea. Got it? I think I do. I think. As the idea of writing a FRBR blog began to gel in my mind, I digressed. For some reason, the picture of FRBRing critters caught in leg traps manifested in my head. Expressly. I snapped back in time to write down "a really vague thing with bullet points." Don't bother to ask. Our discussion of drunk puppets and sock puppet mimes did not get as far as drunk sock puppet mimes, which all had nothing to do with "The Catalog of the Future." Why all the hubbub about the future? Because that's where we are all going to live, and where I will be cataloging. Don't believe me? Just ask Criswell. You may need to ask Dr. Acula for assistance. His friends may call him Karl.