Re: [RDA-L] FRBRized data available for bulk download
Hi, Karen: Thank you very much for bringing up these great points. I do share your concerns. In addition, allowing linking from a manifestation record back to multiple expressions might be hard for data quality control, particularly for data integrity control during CUD processing (e.g. Create, Update, and Delete operations) if no control over the breakdown of identifiers for a record, which glue the composition of: 1. entities such as Work, Expression, Manifestation and Item, and 2. relationships accompanying RDA elements, sub-elements, and vocabularies, etc. in a RDA record. However, it is easier for end users to get to the core function of a catalog, disambiguate similar hits, and explore other parts of linked records representing the concepts of the intellectual work if a manifestation record is used as the base record linked to RDA component records for Work, Expressions, and other related entities, such as persons, events, places, organizations, etc. I understand that you are worried about going back to the one-size fit all bib record. However, if you take a look at this record, it might change your perspective. I found an example coded in MARC 21 format in Swissbib Catalog via this URL: http://www.swissbib.ch/TouchPoint/perma.do?q=0%3D%22115036369%22+IN+%5B3%5Dv=nosel=de http://www.swissbib.ch/TouchPoint/perma.do?q=0%3D%22115036369%22+IN+%5B3%5Dv=nosel=de According to RDA Core Schema, a root RDA core record is broken down into the following RDA elements and their children: * rdaWork * rdaExpression * rdaManifestation * rdaItem * rdaPerson * rdaFamily * rdaCorporateBody * rdaConcept * rdaObject * rdaEvent * rdaPlace * rdaName * rdaRelationships Each element and their child or children is an aggregation agent. Maintaining de-referenceable URIs for parts of a RDA record is as important as maintaining full-text linking to aggregators and publishers, ILL linking to lending libraries, etc. With a little touch of semantics, e.g. supporting HTML5, RDFa, etc., our catalogs can be as powerful as any other Web 2.0 services provided by online information services. As far as I understand, the one-size-fit all bib record is decoupled into reusable components for mash-ups, gadgets, etc. as far as Work, Expression, and Manifestation component records are concerned. What I am trying to say is that let us lay out the data structure to liberate our one-size fit all bib records, many innovative approaches or applications or services will be flourished upon the components of a RDA record. Sincerely yours, Amanda *** Amanda Xu Assistant Professor Information Technology Librarian for Collection Management Room 0364F Bldg LIB James E. Walker Library P.O. Box 13 Middle Tennessee State University Murfreesboro, TN 37132 a...@mtsu.edu (email) 615-904-8510 (office) 718-316-8787 (cell) On 10/18/2010 12:58 PM, Karen Coyle wrote: Quoting Jonathan Rochkind rochk...@jhu.edu: My understanding of the FRBR model is that it insists that _all_ manifestations belong to an expression which belongs to a work. This is what leads to aggregates neccesarily being works -- you've got a manifestation in front of you which is clearly an aggregate. So the manifestation must be part of a work. If you look at the simple Group1 diagram: http://archive.ifla.org/VII/s13/frbr/fig3-1.jpg you see that a manifestation can manifest more than one expression. So there are two (at least) ways to go: 1) consider the aggregate a manifestation and an expression and a work; but that doesn't explain why manifestation and expression are many-to-many 2) consider an aggregate a manifestation of more than one expression, and each expression expresses a single work (note the arrows between expression and work -- each expression can express only one work). It seems to me that the aggregate form (#1 here) completely negates the separation between work, expression and manifestation -- we get back to traditional cataloging where we've only got one thing -- which is defined by the manifestation. It also means that once again just about every publication becomes a separate thing and we are back to showing our users long lists of bibliographic records for the same text. If that's the goal, why did we bother with FRBR in the first place? What does it gain us? kc Possibly it would be better/more flexible to allow manifestations that do not in fact belong to any expression or work; but I'm not sure, it gets confusing to think about. I think maybe a manifestation neccesarily has to belong to an expression and a work for the model to make any sense -- but that doesn't mean the work it belongs
Re: [RDA-L] FRBRized data available for bulk download
I have to agree with Jenn on the practicality of not dealing with aggregates for sound recordings. There are plenty or recordings that have no unifying purpose, and where the constituent works are unrelated (except, say, that they fill the 72 minutes of space on a CD gracefully.) However, there are some aggregations where the works are collected together for a purpose with some unifying characteristics, like operas, concept albums, peces like Holst's Planets, or recordings of works all taken from one manuscript (Eton choirbook, Codex Specialnik, or what have you), and where you might legitimately want access to the consituent parts as well as the whole. Is there/Could there be a contained in relation that connects parts to wholes? On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 11:22 AM, Riley, Jenn jenlr...@indiana.edu wrote: Hi Stephen and all, We’ve made an intentional decision for the V/FRBR project to *not* use the concept of an aggregate work. The many-to-many nature of Expression to Manifestation for our need adequately models the fact that two symphonies were released on the same disc (for example). For our purposes, there’s no practical (or even semantic in my opinion) benefit to calling those two symphonies by two different composers an aggregate Work. Like others have commented, I also have reservations about the aggregate notion in FRBR as a whole. That has fed into the practical decisions our project has made. Jenn On 10/17/10 9:53 PM, Stephen Hearn s-h...@umn.edu wrote: For those who argue that FRBR defines aggregates as works, I wonder if this is too atomic an approach. If there is an aggregate FRBR work whose contents are expressed in an aggregate FRBR expression and embodied in an aggregate FRBR manifestation, couldn't one reasonably argue that the manifestation is really only the embodiment of that aggregate work, and is rather a container for the other, individuated FRBR works that Variations is working with? Does Variations enable the description of the single aggregate FRBR work that a given manifestation arguably represents? For example, a search on octubafest identifies two work results with that word in the title, but they are individual pieces (Octubafest march and Octubafest polka). Wouldn't FRBR consider the aggregation manifested as Octubafest 1981 and the others like it to be works as well? That said, I've long considered the notion of aggregates as FRBR works to be problematic, so I see a lot to admire in the Variations approach. Stephen On Sun, Oct 17, 2010 at 3:04 PM, Riley, Jenn jenlr...@indiana.edu wrote: Dear Bernard and List, My apologies for not responding sooner; I'm impossibly behind in reading listserv email. Comments below. Riley, Jenn wrote: The Variations/FRBR [1] project at Indiana University has released bulk downloads of metadata for the sound recordings presented in our Scherzo [2] music discovery system in a FRBRized XML format. Before digging into this any further, one question: How is the linking between works and expressions effected? On first inspection, I find nothing in the expression data that would indicate the work. The XML format that defines this data (our project efrbr definition; more information at http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/projects/vfrbr/schemas/1.0/index.shtmlhttp://www.dlib.indiana.edu/projects/vfrbr/schemas/1.0/index.shtml%3E) doesn't have the concept of a record, just entities and relationships. The XML wrapper can include any combination of entities and relationships - there's no requirement that it be, say, Work-centric (show one Work and all the other FRBR entities with relationships to that Work) or Manifestation-centric (show one Manifestation and all the other FRBR entities with relationships to that Manifestation), though you could easily use the format for either of those purposes. Therefore the big .xml file that has all the Expression data doesn't *have* to have relationships between Expressions and Works to be valid. We simply chose to arbitrarily break the data into individual XML files by entity and relationship type, since there was enough data we knew we had to split it up somehow to keep the file size to something remotely manageable, so this seemed logical. It's just the raw data - a system using it could index and store and update it however it likes. All the relationships are there, though, spread across all of the files. Relationships between Works and Expressions can be found in the file realizedThrough.xml. I suspect the link to be via the file realizedThrough.xml, because between manifestation and expression, there's the file embodiedIn.xml which seems to be the link between the two. However, I'd have expected the relationship between E and M to be 1:n, yet it seems to be the opposite. Can you elaborate on this matter? You've switched to talking about the relationship between Expression and Manifestation rather than Expression
Re: [RDA-L] FRBRized data available for bulk download
Hi Stephen and all, We’ve made an intentional decision for the V/FRBR project to not use the concept of an aggregate work. The many-to-many nature of Expression to Manifestation for our need adequately models the fact that two symphonies were released on the same disc (for example). For our purposes, there’s no practical (or even semantic in my opinion) benefit to calling those two symphonies by two different composers an aggregate Work. Like others have commented, I also have reservations about the aggregate notion in FRBR as a whole. That has fed into the practical decisions our project has made. Jenn On 10/17/10 9:53 PM, Stephen Hearn s-h...@umn.edu wrote: For those who argue that FRBR defines aggregates as works, I wonder if this is too atomic an approach. If there is an aggregate FRBR work whose contents are expressed in an aggregate FRBR expression and embodied in an aggregate FRBR manifestation, couldn't one reasonably argue that the manifestation is really only the embodiment of that aggregate work, and is rather a container for the other, individuated FRBR works that Variations is working with? Does Variations enable the description of the single aggregate FRBR work that a given manifestation arguably represents? For example, a search on octubafest identifies two work results with that word in the title, but they are individual pieces (Octubafest march and Octubafest polka). Wouldn't FRBR consider the aggregation manifested as Octubafest 1981 and the others like it to be works as well? That said, I've long considered the notion of aggregates as FRBR works to be problematic, so I see a lot to admire in the Variations approach. Stephen On Sun, Oct 17, 2010 at 3:04 PM, Riley, Jenn jenlr...@indiana.edu wrote: Dear Bernard and List, My apologies for not responding sooner; I'm impossibly behind in reading listserv email. Comments below. Riley, Jenn wrote: The Variations/FRBR [1] project at Indiana University has released bulk downloads of metadata for the sound recordings presented in our Scherzo [2] music discovery system in a FRBRized XML format. Before digging into this any further, one question: How is the linking between works and expressions effected? On first inspection, I find nothing in the expression data that would indicate the work. The XML format that defines this data (our project efrbr definition; more information at http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/projects/vfrbr/schemas/1.0/index.shtml) doesn't have the concept of a record, just entities and relationships. The XML wrapper can include any combination of entities and relationships - there's no requirement that it be, say, Work-centric (show one Work and all the other FRBR entities with relationships to that Work) or Manifestation-centric (show one Manifestation and all the other FRBR entities with relationships to that Manifestation), though you could easily use the format for either of those purposes. Therefore the big .xml file that has all the Expression data doesn't *have* to have relationships between Expressions and Works to be valid. We simply chose to arbitrarily break the data into individual XML files by entity and relationship type, since there was enough data we knew we had to split it up somehow to keep the file size to something remotely manageable, so this seemed logical. It's just the raw data - a system using it could index and store and update it however it likes. All the relationships are there, though, spread across all of the files. Relationships between Works and Expressions can be found in the file realizedThrough.xml. I suspect the link to be via the file realizedThrough.xml, because between manifestation and expression, there's the file embodiedIn.xml which seems to be the link between the two. However, I'd have expected the relationship between E and M to be 1:n, yet it seems to be the opposite. Can you elaborate on this matter? You've switched to talking about the relationship between Expression and Manifestation rather than Expression and Work, so I'm a bit confused as to what you're asking, but I'll give it a shot. You're correct that embodiedIn.xml lists relationships between Expression and Manifestation. (Note realized through and embodied in are terms right out of the FRBR report to describe these relationships.) The relationship between Expression and Manifestation is n:n (many to many). A given Expression be embodied in any number of different Manifestations, and a given Manifestation may embody any number of different Expressed Works. In embodiedIn.xml, each element efrbr:embodiedIn describes the relationship between one Expression and one Manifestation. This statement, however, doesn't mean that's the only Manifestation of that Expression, or the only Expression that appears on that Manifestation. Instead, these are just tiny statements of fact. To find all the Expressions on a given Manifestation (which is only one of the
Re: [RDA-L] FRBRized data available for bulk download
So does that mean that you have Manifestations... which do not belong to any Work at all? Or have you just left Works out of your modelling altogether? My understanding of the FRBR model is that it insists that _all_ manifestations belong to an expression which belongs to a work. This is what leads to aggregates neccesarily being works -- you've got a manifestation in front of you which is clearly an aggregate. So the manifestation must be part of a work. Possibly it would be better/more flexible to allow manifestations that do not in fact belong to any expression or work; but I'm not sure, it gets confusing to think about. I think maybe a manifestation neccesarily has to belong to an expression and a work for the model to make any sense -- but that doesn't mean the work it belongs to actually needs to be _modelled_, it can just be an as-of-yet-un-modelled work, that will be modelled only when/if it is useful to do so. Curious how you are handling this in terms of the model exactly though, I'm confused. Riley, Jenn wrote: Hi Stephen and all, We’ve made an intentional decision for the V/FRBR project to not use the concept of an aggregate work. The many-to-many nature of Expression to Manifestation for our need adequately models the fact that two symphonies were released on the same disc (for example). For our purposes, there’s no practical (or even semantic in my opinion) benefit to calling those two symphonies by two different composers an aggregate Work. Like others have commented, I also have reservations about the aggregate notion in FRBR as a whole. That has fed into the practical decisions our project has made. Jenn On 10/17/10 9:53 PM, Stephen Hearn s-h...@umn.edu wrote: For those who argue that FRBR defines aggregates as works, I wonder if this is too atomic an approach. If there is an aggregate FRBR work whose contents are expressed in an aggregate FRBR expression and embodied in an aggregate FRBR manifestation, couldn't one reasonably argue that the manifestation is really only the embodiment of that aggregate work, and is rather a container for the other, individuated FRBR works that Variations is working with? Does Variations enable the description of the single aggregate FRBR work that a given manifestation arguably represents? For example, a search on octubafest identifies two work results with that word in the title, but they are individual pieces (Octubafest march and Octubafest polka). Wouldn't FRBR consider the aggregation manifested as Octubafest 1981 and the others like it to be works as well? That said, I've long considered the notion of aggregates as FRBR works to be problematic, so I see a lot to admire in the Variations approach. Stephen On Sun, Oct 17, 2010 at 3:04 PM, Riley, Jenn jenlr...@indiana.edu wrote: Dear Bernard and List, My apologies for not responding sooner; I'm impossibly behind in reading listserv email. Comments below. Riley, Jenn wrote: The Variations/FRBR [1] project at Indiana University has released bulk downloads of metadata for the sound recordings presented in our Scherzo [2] music discovery system in a FRBRized XML format. Before digging into this any further, one question: How is the linking between works and expressions effected? On first inspection, I find nothing in the expression data that would indicate the work. The XML format that defines this data (our project efrbr definition; more information at http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/projects/vfrbr/schemas/1.0/index.shtml) doesn't have the concept of a record, just entities and relationships. The XML wrapper can include any combination of entities and relationships - there's no requirement that it be, say, Work-centric (show one Work and all the other FRBR entities with relationships to that Work) or Manifestation-centric (show one Manifestation and all the other FRBR entities with relationships to that Manifestation), though you could easily use the format for either of those purposes. Therefore the big .xml file that has all the Expression data doesn't *have* to have relationships between Expressions and Works to be valid. We simply chose to arbitrarily break the data into individual XML files by entity and relationship type, since there was enough data we knew we had to split it up somehow to keep the file size to something remotely manageable, so this seemed logical. It's just the raw data - a system using it could index and store and update it however it likes. All the relationships are there, though, spread across all of the files. Relationships between Works and Expressions can be found in the file realizedThrough.xml. I suspect the link to be via the file realizedThrough.xml, because between manifestation and expression, there's the file embodiedIn.xml which seems to be the link between the two. However, I'd have expected the relationship between E and M to be 1:n, yet it seems to be the opposite. Can you
Re: [RDA-L] FRBRized data available for bulk download
For information - Ed O'Neill chairs the IFLA FRBR Working Group on Aggregates that hopes to have a report in early 2011. - Barbara Tillett From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [mailto:rd...@listserv.lac-bac.gc.ca] On Behalf Of Riley, Jenn Sent: Monday, October 18, 2010 11:22 AM To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] FRBRized data available for bulk download Hi Stephen and all, We've made an intentional decision for the V/FRBR project to not use the concept of an aggregate work. The many-to-many nature of Expression to Manifestation for our need adequately models the fact that two symphonies were released on the same disc (for example). For our purposes, there's no practical (or even semantic in my opinion) benefit to calling those two symphonies by two different composers an aggregate Work. Like others have commented, I also have reservations about the aggregate notion in FRBR as a whole. That has fed into the practical decisions our project has made. Jenn On 10/17/10 9:53 PM, Stephen Hearn s-h...@umn.edu wrote: For those who argue that FRBR defines aggregates as works, I wonder if this is too atomic an approach. If there is an aggregate FRBR work whose contents are expressed in an aggregate FRBR expression and embodied in an aggregate FRBR manifestation, couldn't one reasonably argue that the manifestation is really only the embodiment of that aggregate work, and is rather a container for the other, individuated FRBR works that Variations is working with? Does Variations enable the description of the single aggregate FRBR work that a given manifestation arguably represents? For example, a search on octubafest identifies two work results with that word in the title, but they are individual pieces (Octubafest march and Octubafest polka). Wouldn't FRBR consider the aggregation manifested as Octubafest 1981 and the others like it to be works as well? That said, I've long considered the notion of aggregates as FRBR works to be problematic, so I see a lot to admire in the Variations approach. Stephen On Sun, Oct 17, 2010 at 3:04 PM, Riley, Jenn jenlr...@indiana.edu wrote: Dear Bernard and List, My apologies for not responding sooner; I'm impossibly behind in reading listserv email. Comments below. Riley, Jenn wrote: The Variations/FRBR [1] project at Indiana University has released bulk downloads of metadata for the sound recordings presented in our Scherzo [2] music discovery system in a FRBRized XML format. Before digging into this any further, one question: How is the linking between works and expressions effected? On first inspection, I find nothing in the expression data that would indicate the work. The XML format that defines this data (our project efrbr definition; more information at http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/projects/vfrbr/schemas/1.0/index.shtmlhttp://www.dlib.indiana.edu/projects/vfrbr/schemas/1.0/index.shtml%3e) doesn't have the concept of a record, just entities and relationships. The XML wrapper can include any combination of entities and relationships - there's no requirement that it be, say, Work-centric (show one Work and all the other FRBR entities with relationships to that Work) or Manifestation-centric (show one Manifestation and all the other FRBR entities with relationships to that Manifestation), though you could easily use the format for either of those purposes. Therefore the big .xml file that has all the Expression data doesn't *have* to have relationships between Expressions and Works to be valid. We simply chose to arbitrarily break the data into individual XML files by entity and relationship type, since there was enough data we knew we had to split it up somehow to keep the file size to something remotely manageable, so this seemed logical. It's just the raw data - a system using it could index and store and update it however it likes. All the relationships are there, though, spread across all of the files. Relationships between Works and Expressions can be found in the file realizedThrough.xml. I suspect the link to be via the file realizedThrough.xml, because between manifestation and expression, there's the file embodiedIn.xml which seems to be the link between the two. However, I'd have expected the relationship between E and M to be 1:n, yet it seems to be the opposite. Can you elaborate on this matter? You've switched to talking about the relationship between Expression and Manifestation rather than Expression and Work, so I'm a bit confused as to what you're asking, but I'll give it a shot. You're correct that embodiedIn.xml lists relationships between Expression and Manifestation. (Note realized through and embodied in are terms right out of the FRBR report to describe these relationships.) The relationship between Expression and Manifestation is n:n (many to many). A given Expression be embodied in any number of different Manifestations
Re: [RDA-L] FRBRized data available for bulk download
J. Rochkind wrote, So does that mean that you have Manifestations... which do not belong to any Work at all? Or have you just left Works out of your modelling altogether? My understanding of the FRBR model is that it insists that _all_ manifestations belong to an expression which belongs to a work. This is what leads to aggregates neccesarily being works -- you've got a manifestation in front of you which is clearly an aggregate. So the manifestation must be part of a work. Yes and no. There's nothing in FRBR 3.2.3 to suggest that a manifestation has to be a self-contained physical object. It may thus well be a part of a larger object, a unit inside a container - called an aggregate, a festschrift or conference volume, a periodical volume. The aggregate may be considered a manifestation on another level, but that doesn't take anything away from the character of the units it contains. We must not, I think, view physicality as a defining feature of a manifestation. We have no difficulty, on the other hand, with regarding multipart manifestations as a unit to be treated as one manifestation despite consisting of more than one object. In other words, taking FRBR seriously can only mean that it doesn't matter how a manifestation comes along physically. Monographs, after all, can be very slim, festschrift contributions can be very substantial, and FRBR makes no issue of that - a work is a work is a distinct intellectual or artistic creation, and it is nothing but our age-old convention that makes us think of those two as fundamentally different as soon as we subject them to the act of cataloging. This has no logical foundation, just an economic one. In music, specifically, a catalog is quite useless if it lists just the titles of the CDs, and it is still suboptimal if it lists the constituent (manifestations of expressions of) works in nothing but a contents note. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] FRBRized data available for bulk download
Quoting Jonathan Rochkind rochk...@jhu.edu: My understanding of the FRBR model is that it insists that _all_ manifestations belong to an expression which belongs to a work. This is what leads to aggregates neccesarily being works -- you've got a manifestation in front of you which is clearly an aggregate. So the manifestation must be part of a work. If you look at the simple Group1 diagram: http://archive.ifla.org/VII/s13/frbr/fig3-1.jpg you see that a manifestation can manifest more than one expression. So there are two (at least) ways to go: 1) consider the aggregate a manifestation and an expression and a work; but that doesn't explain why manifestation and expression are many-to-many 2) consider an aggregate a manifestation of more than one expression, and each expression expresses a single work (note the arrows between expression and work -- each expression can express only one work). It seems to me that the aggregate form (#1 here) completely negates the separation between work, expression and manifestation -- we get back to traditional cataloging where we've only got one thing -- which is defined by the manifestation. It also means that once again just about every publication becomes a separate thing and we are back to showing our users long lists of bibliographic records for the same text. If that's the goal, why did we bother with FRBR in the first place? What does it gain us? kc Possibly it would be better/more flexible to allow manifestations that do not in fact belong to any expression or work; but I'm not sure, it gets confusing to think about. I think maybe a manifestation neccesarily has to belong to an expression and a work for the model to make any sense -- but that doesn't mean the work it belongs to actually needs to be _modelled_, it can just be an as-of-yet-un-modelled work, that will be modelled only when/if it is useful to do so. Curious how you are handling this in terms of the model exactly though, I'm confused. Riley, Jenn wrote: Hi Stephen and all, We’ve made an intentional decision for the V/FRBR project to not use the concept of an aggregate work. The many-to-many nature of Expression to Manifestation for our need adequately models the fact that two symphonies were released on the same disc (for example). For our purposes, there’s no practical (or even semantic in my opinion) benefit to calling those two symphonies by two different composers an aggregate Work. Like others have commented, I also have reservations about the aggregate notion in FRBR as a whole. That has fed into the practical decisions our project has made. Jenn On 10/17/10 9:53 PM, Stephen Hearn s-h...@umn.edu wrote: For those who argue that FRBR defines aggregates as works, I wonder if this is too atomic an approach. If there is an aggregate FRBR work whose contents are expressed in an aggregate FRBR expression and embodied in an aggregate FRBR manifestation, couldn't one reasonably argue that the manifestation is really only the embodiment of that aggregate work, and is rather a container for the other, individuated FRBR works that Variations is working with? Does Variations enable the description of the single aggregate FRBR work that a given manifestation arguably represents? For example, a search on octubafest identifies two work results with that word in the title, but they are individual pieces (Octubafest march and Octubafest polka). Wouldn't FRBR consider the aggregation manifested as Octubafest 1981 and the others like it to be works as well? That said, I've long considered the notion of aggregates as FRBR works to be problematic, so I see a lot to admire in the Variations approach. Stephen On Sun, Oct 17, 2010 at 3:04 PM, Riley, Jenn jenlr...@indiana.edu wrote: Dear Bernard and List, My apologies for not responding sooner; I'm impossibly behind in reading listserv email. Comments below. Riley, Jenn wrote: The Variations/FRBR [1] project at Indiana University has released bulk downloads of metadata for the sound recordings presented in our Scherzo [2] music discovery system in a FRBRized XML format. Before digging into this any further, one question: How is the linking between works and expressions effected? On first inspection, I find nothing in the expression data that would indicate the work. The XML format that defines this data (our project efrbr definition; more information at http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/projects/vfrbr/schemas/1.0/index.shtml) doesn't have the concept of a record, just entities and relationships. The XML wrapper can include any combination of entities and relationships - there's no requirement that it be, say, Work-centric (show one Work and all the other FRBR entities with relationships to that Work) or Manifestation-centric (show one Manifestation and all the other FRBR entities with relationships to that
Re: [RDA-L] FRBRized data available for bulk download
In the VTLS FRBR implementation, a manifestation for an aggregate can be linked to multiple Expressions/Works. One of the Expression/Work is for the aggregate as a whole. The other Expression/Works are for the separate Works in the aggregate. John Espley VTLS Inc. On 10/18/2010 1:58 PM, Karen Coyle wrote: Quoting Jonathan Rochkind rochk...@jhu.edu: My understanding of the FRBR model is that it insists that _all_ manifestations belong to an expression which belongs to a work. This is what leads to aggregates neccesarily being works -- you've got a manifestation in front of you which is clearly an aggregate. So the manifestation must be part of a work. If you look at the simple Group1 diagram: http://archive.ifla.org/VII/s13/frbr/fig3-1.jpg you see that a manifestation can manifest more than one expression. So there are two (at least) ways to go: 1) consider the aggregate a manifestation and an expression and a work; but that doesn't explain why manifestation and expression are many-to-many 2) consider an aggregate a manifestation of more than one expression, and each expression expresses a single work (note the arrows between expression and work -- each expression can express only one work). It seems to me that the aggregate form (#1 here) completely negates the separation between work, expression and manifestation -- we get back to traditional cataloging where we've only got one thing -- which is defined by the manifestation. It also means that once again just about every publication becomes a separate thing and we are back to showing our users long lists of bibliographic records for the same text. If that's the goal, why did we bother with FRBR in the first place? What does it gain us? kc Possibly it would be better/more flexible to allow manifestations that do not in fact belong to any expression or work; but I'm not sure, it gets confusing to think about. I think maybe a manifestation neccesarily has to belong to an expression and a work for the model to make any sense -- but that doesn't mean the work it belongs to actually needs to be _modelled_, it can just be an as-of-yet-un-modelled work, that will be modelled only when/if it is useful to do so. Curious how you are handling this in terms of the model exactly though, I'm confused. Riley, Jenn wrote: Hi Stephen and all, We’ve made an intentional decision for the V/FRBR project to not use the concept of an aggregate work. The many-to-many nature of Expression to Manifestation for our need adequately models the fact that two symphonies were released on the same disc (for example). For our purposes, there’s no practical (or even semantic in my opinion) benefit to calling those two symphonies by two different composers an aggregate Work. Like others have commented, I also have reservations about the aggregate notion in FRBR as a whole. That has fed into the practical decisions our project has made. Jenn On 10/17/10 9:53 PM, Stephen Hearn s-h...@umn.edu wrote: For those who argue that FRBR defines aggregates as works, I wonder if this is too atomic an approach. If there is an aggregate FRBR work whose contents are expressed in an aggregate FRBR expression and embodied in an aggregate FRBR manifestation, couldn't one reasonably argue that the manifestation is really only the embodiment of that aggregate work, and is rather a container for the other, individuated FRBR works that Variations is working with? Does Variations enable the description of the single aggregate FRBR work that a given manifestation arguably represents? For example, a search on octubafest identifies two work results with that word in the title, but they are individual pieces (Octubafest march and Octubafest polka). Wouldn't FRBR consider the aggregation manifested as Octubafest 1981 and the others like it to be works as well? That said, I've long considered the notion of aggregates as FRBR works to be problematic, so I see a lot to admire in the Variations approach. Stephen On Sun, Oct 17, 2010 at 3:04 PM, Riley, Jenn jenlr...@indiana.edu wrote: Dear Bernard and List, My apologies for not responding sooner; I'm impossibly behind in reading listserv email. Comments below. Riley, Jenn wrote: The Variations/FRBR [1] project at Indiana University has released bulk downloads of metadata for the sound recordings presented in our Scherzo [2] music discovery system in a FRBRized XML format. Before digging into this any further, one question: How is the linking between works and expressions effected? On first inspection, I find nothing in the expression data that would indicate the work. The XML format that defines this data (our project efrbr definition; more information at http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/projects/vfrbr/schemas/1.0/index.shtml) doesn't have the concept of a record, just entities and relationships. The XML wrapper can include any combination of
Re: [RDA-L] FRBRized data available for bulk download
Karen Coyle wrote: snip If you look at the simple Group1 diagram: http://archive.ifla.org/VII/s13/frbr/fig3-1.jpg you see that a manifestation can manifest more than one expression. So there are two (at least) ways to go: 1) consider the aggregate a manifestation and an expression and a work; but that doesn't explain why manifestation and expression are many-to-many 2) consider an aggregate a manifestation of more than one expression, and each expression expresses a single work (note the arrows between expression and work -- each expression can express only one work). It seems to me that the aggregate form (#1 here) completely negates the separation between work, expression and manifestation -- we get back to traditional cataloging where we've only got one thing -- which is defined by the manifestation. It also means that once again just about every publication becomes a separate thing and we are back to showing our users long lists of bibliographic records for the same text. If that's the goal, why did we bother with FRBR in the first place? What does it gain us? /snip If I understand this correctly, this is what Bernhard has been mentioned several times, but in one of my replies, I mentioned how I would *index* a single volume of conference proceedings, and one volume with a single record could easily turn into 40 or 50 separate items--a trend that is unsustainable in a practical sense, in my opinion, but who knows? It seems to me there are many possible ways to go on this. I guess that when I considered aggregate works, I was thinking of mashups (e.g. what is the Youtube main page with dozens of videos), otherwise isn't it just the same as any other compilations, series treatments, and various types of multipart items, as Karen mentions? Still, it seems as if there should be some idea somewhere of standardization. For example, what is the difference between cataloging and indexing, or does FRBR view the two tasks as merging? James L. Weinheimer j.weinhei...@aur.edu Director of Library and Information Services The American University of Rome Rome, Italy First Thus: http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/
Re: [RDA-L] FRBRized data available for bulk download
I take respectful exception to the choice of the word belong to when describing relationships among the WEMI entities. To my mind, belong connotes a relationship along the lines of whole-part: a chapter of a book, if modeled as a Work in its own right, belongs to the larger work in which it was conceived as a part. Similarly, a volume in a monographic series belongs to the aggregate manifestation of the entire series. Etc., etc. The fact that a Manifestation must have at least one embodied expression (which realizes a work) in order for us to care about it (i.e. represent it in our metadata) does not mean that the Manifestation belongs to that expression (or, transitively, the work). This is an important concept to be wary of when considering aggregates. I anxiously await the IFLA FRBR Group on Aggregate's report, but in the mean time, my view of the identity of aggregates as Works is that such identity is highly dependent on context. In the case of textual monographs, thinking of the content of a resource as an aggregate work allows one to, for example, perform subject analysis on that content as a unit (since that happens at the Work level). But in the case of music resources, providing access to such a happenstance aggregate work, which nearly always only exists by virtue of that particular grouping, does not serve the user. The upshot is that while aggregates can be a helpful modeling/access tool, their existence is not necessary per FRBR. To tie together my two points: whether or not representing the content of a resource as an aggregate is prudent in a particular scenario, it is never, to my mind, prudent to consider the Manifestation as belonging (via an expression) to such a work. Such a restrictive view, which seems to connote one-to-one relationships among WEMI (which FRBR does not support) is a hindrance to interoperability. To illustrate a fairly common case, an issue of a serial can be cataloged as a monograph, with its content represented as a unit for purposes of subject analysis, etc. It can also be analyzed at the article level, for access in a journal database. The Manifestation in question, however, is the same entity in both scenarios. So, which Work(s)/Expression(s) does this Manifestation belong to? All? Neither? To reiterate, I think what Jonathan is getting at is that a Manifestion needs to *embody* to at least one Expression for it to be an entity of interest in our metadata. Put another way, the stuff embodied in a Manifestation needs to be represented as either a compilation of expressed works, or one expressed work, whichever best represents the content and provides access to the user. But in pure terms of the V/FRBR data structure, the manifestation is simply a node in a graph, related to other nodes, but belonging to none of them. Cheers, Casey (full disclosure: formerly on the Variations project, but not currently speaking on their behalf) On 10/18/2010 8:38 AM, Jonathan Rochkind wrote: So does that mean that you have Manifestations... which do not belong to any Work at all? Or have you just left Works out of your modelling altogether? My understanding of the FRBR model is that it insists that _all_ manifestations belong to an expression which belongs to a work. This is what leads to aggregates neccesarily being works -- you've got a manifestation in front of you which is clearly an aggregate. So the manifestation must be part of a work. Possibly it would be better/more flexible to allow manifestations that do not in fact belong to any expression or work; but I'm not sure, it gets confusing to think about. I think maybe a manifestation neccesarily has to belong to an expression and a work for the model to make any sense -- but that doesn't mean the work it belongs to actually needs to be _modelled_, it can just be an as-of-yet-un-modelled work, that will be modelled only when/if it is useful to do so. Curious how you are handling this in terms of the model exactly though, I'm confused. Riley, Jenn wrote: Hi Stephen and all, We’ve made an intentional decision for the V/FRBR project to not use the concept of an aggregate work. The many-to-many nature of Expression to Manifestation for our need adequately models the fact that two symphonies were released on the same disc (for example). For our purposes, there’s no practical (or even semantic in my opinion) benefit to calling those two symphonies by two different composers an aggregate Work. Like others have commented, I also have reservations about the aggregate notion in FRBR as a whole. That has fed into the practical decisions our project has made. Jenn On 10/17/10 9:53 PM, Stephen Hearn s-h...@umn.edu wrote: For those who argue that FRBR defines aggregates as works, I wonder if this is too atomic an approach. If there is an aggregate FRBR work whose contents are expressed in an aggregate FRBR expression and embodied in an aggregate
Re: [RDA-L] FRBRized data available for bulk download
Yes, what Karen said. (Thanks, Karen!) That's exactly how we look at it. So a Manifestation does have Expressed Works in it (to answer your question Jonathan), just more than one in many cases. Since more than one is OK, no need for aggregates. Jenn -Original Message- From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [mailto:rd...@listserv.lac-bac.gc.ca] On Behalf Of Karen Coyle Sent: Monday, October 18, 2010 1:58 PM To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] FRBRized data available for bulk download Quoting Jonathan Rochkind rochk...@jhu.edu: My understanding of the FRBR model is that it insists that _all_ manifestations belong to an expression which belongs to a work. This is what leads to aggregates neccesarily being works -- you've got a manifestation in front of you which is clearly an aggregate. So the manifestation must be part of a work. If you look at the simple Group1 diagram: http://archive.ifla.org/VII/s13/frbr/fig3-1.jpg you see that a manifestation can manifest more than one expression. So there are two (at least) ways to go: 1) consider the aggregate a manifestation and an expression and a work; but that doesn't explain why manifestation and expression are many-to-many 2) consider an aggregate a manifestation of more than one expression, and each expression expresses a single work (note the arrows between expression and work -- each expression can express only one work). It seems to me that the aggregate form (#1 here) completely negates the separation between work, expression and manifestation -- we get back to traditional cataloging where we've only got one thing -- which is defined by the manifestation. It also means that once again just about every publication becomes a separate thing and we are back to showing our users long lists of bibliographic records for the same text. If that's the goal, why did we bother with FRBR in the first place? What does it gain us? kc Possibly it would be better/more flexible to allow manifestations that do not in fact belong to any expression or work; but I'm not sure, it gets confusing to think about. I think maybe a manifestation neccesarily has to belong to an expression and a work for the model to make any sense -- but that doesn't mean the work it belongs to actually needs to be _modelled_, it can just be an as-of-yet-un-modelled work, that will be modelled only when/if it is useful to do so. Curious how you are handling this in terms of the model exactly though, I'm confused. Riley, Jenn wrote: Hi Stephen and all, We’ve made an intentional decision for the V/FRBR project to not use the concept of an aggregate work. The many-to-many nature of Expression to Manifestation for our need adequately models the fact that two symphonies were released on the same disc (for example). For our purposes, there’s no practical (or even semantic in my opinion) benefit to calling those two symphonies by two different composers an aggregate Work. Like others have commented, I also have reservations about the aggregate notion in FRBR as a whole. That has fed into the practical decisions our project has made. Jenn On 10/17/10 9:53 PM, Stephen Hearn s-h...@umn.edu wrote: For those who argue that FRBR defines aggregates as works, I wonder if this is too atomic an approach. If there is an aggregate FRBR work whose contents are expressed in an aggregate FRBR expression and embodied in an aggregate FRBR manifestation, couldn't one reasonably argue that the manifestation is really only the embodiment of that aggregate work, and is rather a container for the other, individuated FRBR works that Variations is working with? Does Variations enable the description of the single aggregate FRBR work that a given manifestation arguably represents? For example, a search on octubafest identifies two work results with that word in the title, but they are individual pieces (Octubafest march and Octubafest polka). Wouldn't FRBR consider the aggregation manifested as Octubafest 1981 and the others like it to be works as well? That said, I've long considered the notion of aggregates as FRBR works to be problematic, so I see a lot to admire in the Variations approach. Stephen On Sun, Oct 17, 2010 at 3:04 PM, Riley, Jenn jenlr...@indiana.edu wrote: Dear Bernard and List, My apologies for not responding sooner; I'm impossibly behind in reading listserv email. Comments below. Riley, Jenn wrote: The Variations/FRBR [1] project at Indiana University has released bulk downloads of metadata for the sound recordings presented in our Scherzo [2] music discovery system in a FRBRized XML format. Before digging into this any further, one question: How is the linking between works and expressions effected? On first inspection, I find nothing
Re: [RDA-L] FRBRized data available for bulk download
On 18/10/2010 12:53 PM, Stephen Hearn wrote: I've long considered the notion of aggregates as FRBR works to be problematic, so I see a lot to admire in the Variations approach. I haven't yet turned my attention to the Variations information, which looks very interesting; but this calls up some problems I have with FRBR. Some time ago, I recall, I questioned the validity of considering collections (assuming aggregates includes these) as works on the same basis as other works; in reply IIRC Barbara Tillett suggested there was no good reason for considering containing works to be essentially different from others. (If my recollection is faulty, I'm sorry for that; but I think the issue deserves attention, even if I have attribution and detail a bit wrong!) I presume that containing works may be monographic, i.e. assembled into a set named and definable as a coherent entity; or alternatively extending (e.g. monographic series, or serial, maybe also integrating); and one shades into the other, as when a collection of readings, or musical pieces, or whatever, is presented in a new edition, but under the same title, with variations of content. I think the FRBR framework WEMI is too minimalistic a summary of real bibliographic life; to accomodate reality, the definitions have to be trained and stretched rather too far. Consider recent exchanges, here and elsewhere, about topics such as lack of definition in the practice of formulating provider-neutral records, and treatment of electronic documents reproducing a reproduction of a document originally in another medium. One of my favorite points of difficulty is concerned with the failure to recognize subcategories: by strict adherence to FRBR principles, a print reproduction of a print text issued by another publisher is another expression; as I see things, it could better be characterized as a sub-manifestation -- but sub-entities don't figure in the schema. Another conceivable sub-entity, in a different order, are the physical parts of an item, e.g. volumes of a multi-volume printed text. FRBR is a conceptual framework (not a data structure), of immense value, but there are things it doesn't accomodate well. As our approaches to bibliographic control become increasingly granular, I fear the deficiencies of FRBR as metadata structure will become increasingly clear; I fear also that responses will be fragmented and contradictory, undermining the hoped-for progress towards interoperability. Therefore I don't think we should just shrug our shoulders, nor simply lift the edge of the carpet to slide the debris out of sight. The history of cataloguing shows that difficulties don't go away if we don't look at them. Hal Cain (retired but not uninterested) Melbourne, Australia hec...@dml.vic.edu.au This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.
Re: [RDA-L] FRBRized data available for bulk download
Riley, Jenn wrote: The Variations/FRBR [1] project at Indiana University has released bulk downloads of metadata for the sound recordings presented in our Scherzo [2] music discovery system in a FRBRized XML format. The downloadable data includes FRBR Work, Expression, Manifestation, Person, and Corporate Body records, along with the structural and responsibility relationships connecting them. While this is still an incomplete representation of FRBR and FRAD, we hope that the release of this data will aid others that are studying or working with FRBR. This XML data conforms to the efrbr set of XML Schemas [3] created for this project. The XML data may be downloaded from http://vfrbr.info/data/1.0/index.shtml, and comments/questions may be directed to vf...@dlib.indiana.edu. Before digging into this any further, one question: How is the linking between works and expressions effected? On first inspection, I find nothing in the expression data that would indicate the work. I suspect the link to be via the file realizedThrough.xml, because between manifestation and expression, there's the file embodiedIn.xml which seems to be the link between the two. However, I'd have expected the relationship between E and M to be 1:n, yet it seems to be the opposite. Can you elaborate on this matter? Many thanks, B.Eversberg
[RDA-L] FRBRized data available for bulk download
The Variations/FRBR [1] project at Indiana University has released bulk downloads of metadata for the sound recordings presented in our Scherzo [2] music discovery system in a FRBRized XML format. The downloadable data includes FRBR Work, Expression, Manifestation, Person, and Corporate Body records, along with the structural and responsibility relationships connecting them. While this is still an incomplete representation of FRBR and FRAD, we hope that the release of this data will aid others that are studying or working with FRBR. This XML data conforms to the efrbr set of XML Schemas [3] created for this project. The XML data may be downloaded from http://vfrbr.info/data/1.0/index.shtml, and comments/questions may be directed to vf...@dlib.indiana.edu. One caveat to those who seek to use this data: we plan to continue improving our FRBRization algorithm into the future and have not yet implemented a way to keep entity identifiers consistent between new data loads. Therefore we cannot at this time guarantee the Work with the identifier http://vfrbr.info/work/30001, for example, will have the same identifier in the future. Therefore this data at this time should be considered highly experimental. Many thanks to the Institute of Museum and Library Services for funding the V/FRBR project. Also, if you're interested in FRBR, please do check out our experimental discovery system: http://vfrbr.info/search. We're very interested in your feedback! Jenn [1] V/FRBR project home page http://vfrbr.info; FRBR report http://www.ifla.org/en/publications/functional-requirements-for-bibliographic-records [2] Scherzo http://vfrbr.info/search [3] V/FRBR project XML Schemas http://vfrbr.info/schemas/1.0/index.shtml Jenn Riley Metadata Librarian Digital Library Program Indiana University - Bloomington Wells Library W501 (812) 856-5759 www.dlib.indiana.edu Inquiring Librarian blog: www.inquiringlibrarian.blogspot.com
