A cultural heritage resource description theorist would, in addition to identifying and developing exemplars from real bibliographic data and other sources, want to speculate about possible resource/description configurations that call for changes in existing information technologies. To the theorist, it would be as important to find out what can’t be done with FRBR and other resource description models at library, archive, museum, and Internet scales, as it is to be able to explain routine item cataloging and tagging activities. Discovering system limitations is better done in advance by simulating uncommon or challenging circumstances than by having problems appear later in production systems.

This passage points to an important skill, not only for theorists, but for practitioners; not only in a hypothetical future, but today. It positions cataloguing and metadata work as the challenge of solving description at the appropriate level of abstraction.

To do this, cataloguers must be aware of systems and their features; but, more fundamentally, of languages of description and their capabilities & of the features of particular models within them. How do we achieve this awareness for professionals entering the field, as well as for those with significant experience with a particular descriptive paradigm?