Re: [RDA-L] Urls in access fields
John Attig wrote: In some of my presentations, I have suggested that we should consider using both entity (registry) records -- to represent the person -- and name authority records to represent one of the many possible access points representing the name of the person. This allows us to record -- and share -- the factual information that is not dependent on particular rules or interpretations of the facts, while also providing a record for a particular access point that could give the context in which that access point is appropriate -- e.g., the form established according to RDA rules by an agency in the United States and appropriate for U.S.-English-language users. Needless to say, the name records would all be linked through identifiers to the appropriate person record. Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet: What's in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet; So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd, Retain that dear perfection which he owes Without that title. ... And certainly, Juliet would not want to find a name, but the fellow, under whichever name he may conceal himself. Based on this classical view, VIAF has not taken the approach John envisions here. There is actually only one record per identified person, and this can contain a great lot of very different names. Every one of these can have subfields indicating that it is in use as a form in this or that context, or is even the preferred form in that context. Verbosely, what we'd find for Händel, the composer, is Handel, George Frideric [1685-1759]: AACR2 / preferred form Händel, Georg Friedrich: Germany / preferred form; AACR2 / alt. form Gendel', G.F.: Russia / preferred form So, if someone has entered any of these forms and intends to search in a German context, the VIAF would supply the correct preferred form and pass it on to the context. (Needless to say, this setup doesn't mandate RDA nor FRBR!) For your weekend, here's the entire list of Handel's disguises: http://www.worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n79-129204 B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Urls in access fields
And meanwhile, the patron will think we have all gone crazy. Let's see. The author is known as Mark Twain. Do you have any biographies on him. No, but we have biographies on Samuel Clemens. Are they the same. Sure, trust me. Hello hon, did you get a biography on Mark Twain. No, but I got one on Samuel Clemens Next scene: Gnasing of teeth, throwing dishes. Next scene: Marital counselingetc. On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 5:44 PM, John Attig jx...@psu.edu wrote: The situation may be a bit less clear than Karen describes. It is not clear that the registry record represented by the URL will in fact identify a person. Currently it identifies the person known by a particular name; in other words, we tend to merge the concept of an entity and the name of the entity. In most of the discussions of FRBR implementation that I have heard, it is said that the record that represents the person (which most people are comfortable calling an authority record, but which some are calling something more generic; Tom Delsey suggested using registry record for records representing ANY of the FRBR entities) will include a preferred access point for the person. That makes the record less a representation of the entity (e.g. person) and more the representation of one name for that person. In some of my presentations, I have suggested that we should consider using both entity (registry) records -- to represent the person -- and name authority records to represent one of the many possible access points representing the name of the person. This allows us to record -- and share -- the factual information that is not dependent on particular rules or interpretations of the facts, while also providing a record for a particular access point that could give the context in which that access point is appropriate -- e.g., the form established according to RDA rules by an agency in the United States and appropriate for U.S.-English-language users. Needless to say, the name records would all be linked through identifiers to the appropriate person record. I have not heard anyone else pick up on this idea, but I think it is definitely worth considering because (in my opinion) it is the only way that we can support the kind of identification of persons that Karen describes in her post. John Attig ALA Rep to the JSC -- Gene Fieg Cataloger/Serials Librarian Claremont School of Theology gf...@cst.edu
Re: [RDA-L] Urls in access fields
John Attig wrote: ... In terms of what I was describing, what the VIAF lacks is a general description of the person at the center of the web of names; it seems to me if we were creating such entity descriptions it would make the work of clustering in resources such as the VIAF easier and more accurate. It is not, to my knowledge, the intention behind VIAF to create a biographical resource. The intended use is for it to be a kind of switchboard: someone enters a name into a catalog search form, then that name is - behind the scenes - switched to the form preferred by the context (the actual catalog) in which the search is then to be conducted. Federated search could profit the most from this. As long as there are many catalogs that do not contain the VIAF ID numbers for the persons, VIAF as switchboard looks like the best possible approach. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Urls in access fields
Quoting from my blog post responding to Martha Yee's paper:
2. A URI is an identifier; it identifies
There
is a lot of angst in the library world about using URI-structured
identifiers for things. The concern is mainly that something like "Mark
Twain" will be replaced with "http://id.loc.gov/authorities/n79021164"
in library data, and that users will be shown a bibliographic record
that goes like:
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/n79021164
Adventures of Tom Sawyer
or
will have to wait for half an hour for their display because the
display form must be retrieved from a server in Vanuatu. This is a
misunderstanding about the purpose of using identifiers. A URI is not a
substitute for a human-readable display form. It is an identifier. It
identifies. Although my medical plan may identify me as p37209372, my
doctor still knows me as Karen. The identifier, however, keeps me
distinct from the many other Karens in the medical practice. Whether or
not your application carries just identifiers in its data, carries an
identifier and a preferred display form, or an identifier and some
number of different display forms (e.g. in different languages) is up
to the application and its needs. The point is that the presence of an
identifier does not preclude having human-readable forms in your data
record or database.
So why use identifiers? An identifier gives
you precision in the midst of complexity. Author n790211164 may be
"Mark Twain" to my users, and "Ma-ko Tu-wen" to someone else's, but
we will know it is the same author if we use the same identifier. And
Pluto the planet-like object will have a different identifier from
Pluto the animated character because they are different things. It
doesn't matter that they have the same name in some languages. The
identifier is not intended for human consumption, but is needed because
machines are not (yet?) able to cope with the ambiguities of natural
language. Using identifiers it becomes possible for machines to process
statements like "Herman Melville is the author of Moby Dick" without
understanding one word of what that means. If Melville is A123 and Moby
Dick is B456 and authorship is represented by x-, then a machine
can answer a question like: "what are all of the entities with A123
x-?", which to a human translates to: "What books did Herman
Melville write?"
As we know from our own experience, creating
identities is tricky business. As we rely more on identifiers, we need
to be aware of is how important it is to understand exactly what an
identifier identifies. When a library creates an authority record for
"Twain, Mark," it may appear to be identifying a person; in fact, it is
identifying a "personal author," who can be the same as a person, but
could be just one of many names that a natural person writes under, or
could be a group of people who write as a single individual. This isn't
the same definition of person that would be used by, for example, the
IRS or your medical plan. We can also be pretty sure that, barring a
miracle, we will not have a situation where everyone agrees on one
single identifier or identifier system, so we will need switching
systems that translate from one identifier space to another. These may
work something like xISBN, where you send in one identifier and you get
back one or more identifiers that are considered equivalent (for some
definition of "equivalent").
*
kc
http://kcoyle.blogspot.com/
J. McRee Elrod wrote:
Earlier, when I objected to urls in access fields, since it would
require Internet access be available for OPAC use, it was said that
the target record could be inhouse.
Utlas/Catss was replacing access field text with authority RSNs (001s)
as early as 1979, with text when the record was accessed or exported.
One could get the appropriate RSN in a 100/600/700 by keying
"shakespeare william 1564"; the heading would be displayed complete
with correct capitalization and death date, and in downloaded records
with subfield codes. I don't know why this concept is being discussed
as if new.
It seems strange to me to use an "url" to access local information.
It seems to me that such a local identifier needs some other name to
avoid confusion with an internet identifier. The NAF RSN seems more
approprite to me, since that number would be in the downloaded
authority recrord, and could be used to get a replacement record if
the authority text changed.
__ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod (m...@slc.bc.ca)
{__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
___} |__ \__
--
---
Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
kco...@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
Re: [RDA-L] Urls in access fields
Definitely the idea of a record representing a person needs to be kept seperate from the various names established according to various rules to label the person. Kept seperate conceptually, and kept seperately addressable in our data. That doesn't mean that there necessarily need to be two records though. One record is perfectly capable of including information about 'preferred label in RDA', 'preferred label used at spanish national library', 'alternate label according to X', etc, etc. indefintely. You don't need a seperate record for that. But you do need a record capable of expressing what the relationship of a name label to the person is, what rules it's established under, etc. One record can do that though. I'm not sure if there are benefits to keeping this in seperate 'record' packages? Really, as long as the data is clearly identified and seperately addressable, some people can keep it in one record, and others in multiple records, and it can still be exchanged and shared and translated. Personally, I think the idea of a name as 'access point' is no longer useful to us. The 'access point' terminology kind of has bundled up in it that a name is used BOTH as a display label AND for collocation -- that is for identifying the person entity the record belongs to (that's really what 'collocation' means). Personally, I've argued before that we should be trying to move away from using one string for both these purposes. But certainly the legacy practice needs to be accomodated while we move away from it, sure. And it can be, with one record or multiple records. Jonathan From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [rd...@listserv.lac-bac.gc.ca] On Behalf Of John Attig [jx...@psu.edu] Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2009 8:44 PM To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] Urls in access fields The situation may be a bit less clear than Karen describes. It is not clear that the registry record represented by the URL will in fact identify a person. Currently it identifies the person known by a particular name; in other words, we tend to merge the concept of an entity and the name of the entity. In most of the discussions of FRBR implementation that I have heard, it is said that the record that represents the person (which most people are comfortable calling an authority record, but which some are calling something more generic; Tom Delsey suggested using registry record for records representing ANY of the FRBR entities) will include a preferred access point for the person. That makes the record less a representation of the entity (e.g. person) and more the representation of one name for that person. In some of my presentations, I have suggested that we should consider using both entity (registry) records -- to represent the person -- and name authority records to represent one of the many possible access points representing the name of the person. This allows us to record -- and share -- the factual information that is not dependent on particular rules or interpretations of the facts, while also providing a record for a particular access point that could give the context in which that access point is appropriate -- e.g., the form established according to RDA rules by an agency in the United States and appropriate for U.S.-English-language users. Needless to say, the name records would all be linked through identifiers to the appropriate person record. I have not heard anyone else pick up on this idea, but I think it is definitely worth considering because (in my opinion) it is the only way that we can support the kind of identification of persons that Karen describes in her post. John Attig ALA Rep to the JSC
Re: [RDA-L] Urls in access fields
I'm dubious that a record can represent a person in any absolute sense, especially when one moves into the realm of personas and, worse, corporate and territorial entities, whose boundaries tend to be even fuzzier and more fluid. I'm fairly confident that the VIAF will provide a good enough switching mechanism between various universes of personal names--possibly even persona, at least within an RDA-adhering library community--but beyond that it gets murky. The names used in the intellectual property community--and the corresponding persons--are different from ours, mainly because they identify the person to whom to make out the check. But in the world of the Semantic Web we would want to at least make an attempt at switching back and forth, to bring together bibliographic records and copyright records. URIs and switching mechanisms such as the VIAF will facilitate this. Ed Jones National University (San Diego, Calif.) PS: It should also be recalled that what we're calling URIs for persons, etc., within our community derive from numbers originally assigned for ordering printed card sets. Their primary purpose is still inventory control, even if now virtual rather than physical. And additions, deletions, and changes frequently require manual intervention by the receiving system. -Original Message- From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access on behalf of Jonathan Rochkind Sent: Tue 7/14/2009 6:18 PM To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] Urls in access fields Definitely the idea of a record representing a person needs to be kept seperate from the various names established according to various rules to label the person. Kept seperate conceptually, and kept seperately addressable in our data. That doesn't mean that there necessarily need to be two records though. One record is perfectly capable of including information about 'preferred label in RDA', 'preferred label used at spanish national library', 'alternate label according to X', etc, etc. indefintely. You don't need a seperate record for that. But you do need a record capable of expressing what the relationship of a name label to the person is, what rules it's established under, etc. One record can do that though. I'm not sure if there are benefits to keeping this in seperate 'record' packages? Really, as long as the data is clearly identified and seperately addressable, some people can keep it in one record, and others in multiple records, and it can still be exchanged and shared and translated. Personally, I think the idea of a name as 'access point' is no longer useful to us. The 'access point' terminology kind of has bundled up in it that a name is used BOTH as a display label AND for collocation -- that is for identifying the person entity the record belongs to (that's really what 'collocation' means). Personally, I've argued before that we should be trying to move away from using one string for both these purposes. But certainly the legacy practice needs to be accomodated while we move away from it, sure. And it can be, with one record or multiple records. Jonathan From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [rd...@listserv.lac-bac.gc.ca] On Behalf Of John Attig [jx...@psu.edu] Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2009 8:44 PM To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] Urls in access fields The situation may be a bit less clear than Karen describes. It is not clear that the registry record represented by the URL will in fact identify a person. Currently it identifies the person known by a particular name; in other words, we tend to merge the concept of an entity and the name of the entity. In most of the discussions of FRBR implementation that I have heard, it is said that the record that represents the person (which most people are comfortable calling an authority record, but which some are calling something more generic; Tom Delsey suggested using registry record for records representing ANY of the FRBR entities) will include a preferred access point for the person. That makes the record less a representation of the entity (e.g. person) and more the representation of one name for that person. In some of my presentations, I have suggested that we should consider using both entity (registry) records -- to represent the person -- and name authority records to represent one of the many possible access points representing the name of the person. This allows us to record -- and share -- the factual information that is not dependent on particular rules or interpretations of the facts, while also providing a record for a particular access point that could give the context in which that access point is appropriate -- e.g., the form established according to RDA rules by an agency in the United States and appropriate for U.S.-English-language users
Re: [RDA-L] Urls in access fields
Thanks, John. Yes, my explanation was sketchy at best, just to get the point across. I do wonder, though, if we have an entity representing natural persons what we will do with those where more than one person writes as a single author. In that case, each natural person is an undefined portion of an author entity. To equate each of them with an author name may not explain that neither embodies the author entirely. That's one of the reasons why I think that for our metadata purposes we should focus on personal authors as they are defined on the books, rather than try to base it on a natural person entity. The natural person (or persons) could be one of the elements used in describing the bibliographic person. The interesting thing about this is that it might separate the bibliographic person from the subject person in some cases. I find it odd that we have books with the subject Twain, Mark, 1835-1910 -- Biography. I'm sure that's where the users would look for biographies of the man who wrote as Mark Twain, but I'm not sure it makes sense. The biography is of Samuel Clemens who wrote as Mark Twain. I also think that we need to move away from the idea that there is one preferred access point for anyone or any thing. Instead, we should consider that in any particular context there is a preferred access point, but that may vary by circumstance. The obvious context is the language of the catalog -- it would be terrible to create a new authority record for each language, each with a preferred access point. Instead, an authority record should be able to have the preferred access points for any number of languages, and let systems select the one they need at that moment. This would allow us to create multi-lingual catalogs, and to do what the VIAF is now trying to do, which is to align different preferred forms. The authority record should represent the author, not just one preferred form of the author's name. Maybe that's where we are getting confused... kc John Attig wrote: The situation may be a bit less clear than Karen describes. It is not clear that the registry record represented by the URL will in fact identify a person. Currently it identifies the person known by a particular name; in other words, we tend to merge the concept of an entity and the name of the entity. In most of the discussions of FRBR implementation that I have heard, it is said that the record that represents the person (which most people are comfortable calling an authority record, but which some are calling something more generic; Tom Delsey suggested using registry record for records representing ANY of the FRBR entities) will include a preferred access point for the person. That makes the record less a representation of the entity (e.g. person) and more the representation of one name for that person. In some of my presentations, I have suggested that we should consider using both entity (registry) records -- to represent the person -- and name authority records to represent one of the many possible access points representing the name of the person. This allows us to record -- and share -- the factual information that is not dependent on particular rules or interpretations of the facts, while also providing a record for a particular access point that could give the context in which that access point is appropriate -- e.g., the form established according to RDA rules by an agency in the United States and appropriate for U.S.-English-language users. Needless to say, the name records would all be linked through identifiers to the appropriate person record. I have not heard anyone else pick up on this idea, but I think it is definitely worth considering because (in my opinion) it is the only way that we can support the kind of identification of persons that Karen describes in her post. John Attig ALA Rep to the JSC -- --- Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant kco...@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet fx.: 510-848-3913 mo.: 510-435-8234
Re: [RDA-L] Urls in access fields
At 12:46 AM 7/15/2009, Karen Coyle wrote: I also think that we need to move away from the idea that there is one preferred access point for anyone or any thing. Instead, we should consider that in any particular context there is a preferred access point, but that may vary by circumstance. The obvious context is the language of the catalog -- it would be terrible to create a new authority record for each language, each with a preferred access point. Instead, an authority record should be able to have the preferred access points for any number of languages, and let systems select the one they need at that moment. This would allow us to create multi-lingual catalogs, and to do what the VIAF is now trying to do, which is to align different preferred forms. The authority record should represent the author, not just one preferred form of the author's name. Maybe that's where we are getting confused... I'm not convinced that we can or should move away from the concept of a preferred access point. I would argue instead that we need to understand that any access point is preferred in a particular context and that there may be many different contexts in which preferences may be appropriate. And that it is important that each preferred access point clearly identify the context in which it is to be preferred. On a different point, I think that the VIAF (as I understand it) is very close to what I was describing. I don't think they are aggregating authority records -- which in this case are clearly records controlling a particular form of a person's name -- into records for a person. What I believe is happening is that they are creating webs or networks of authority records created by different agencies that relate to the same person and which may contain different forms of the name. In terms of what I was describing, what the VIAF lacks is a general description of the person at the center of the web of names; it seems to me if we were creating such entity descriptions it would make the work of clustering in resources such as the VIAF easier and more accurate. John
