Kelley, this is great! Thanks. And since you already have so much
written up, would you consider going a bit further and offering it to
the code4lib journal? My reasons are selfish -- i'd like to be able to
find and cite this in the future.
Later I may have a few comments.
kc
Quoting Kelley McGrath <[email protected]>:
We called it "FRBR-inspired" since it probably wouldn't pass muster
as an orthodox FRBR interpretation. We were looking to experiment
with a practical approach that we thought would make it much easier
for patrons to discover moving images in libraries and archives. If
you haven't read it, the "about" page gives a general overview of
our approach at http://blazing-sunset-24.heroku.com/page/about
Our top level is a combination of FRBR work information and
information about what we are calling the "primary expression." We
haven't made any internal distinction between these two types of
information. This enables us to record together the data that we
think people expect to see about the generic moving image and
reflects the sort of information that is given in IMDb, the All
Movie Guide, and film and TV reference sources. This is also the
data that we would want to re-use in every MARC record for a
manifestation of a given movie.
This also allowed us to get around some of the areas of more
orthodox FRBR modeling that we found unhelpful. For example, FRBR
doesn't allow language at the Work level, but we think it is
important to record the original language of a moving image at the
top level. In addition, RDA has mapped a number of functions, such
as art director, costume designer and performer, to the expression
level. We would prefer to present these at the top level. It is hard
to imagine a version of Gone With the Wind with a different costume
designer or cast that would still be the same work. So all the Seven
Samurai data you listed above belongs either to the work or the
primary expression.
We mingle expression, manifestation and item information in the
version facets on the right. We don't show any explicit expression
records. In this demonstration we are not actually identifying any
unique expressions, although in the future we will probably want to
do this for what I think of as "named expressions." Since this is a
demo, we are working with a limited number of attributes and the
only expression-level facets we provide are soundtrack and subtitle
languages.
In this sense, our approach is similar to the near manifestation
idea that Simon mentioned. We are not trying to assert that we have
identified particular expressions. Rather, we are trying to provide
a mechanism for the user to identify the set of items that meet
their needs. It is not clear to me that libraries are always in a
position to accurately identify expressions.
Rather than providing a hierarchical view where the user selects a
work, then an expression, and so on, as is common in FRBR
presentations, we permit the user to begin at any FRBR level. The
user is invited to limit by as many characteristics as they desire
to delineate the set of things that they are interested in. They
only need to select as many attributes as are important to them and
no more. This may not meet the needs of all scholars, but we hope
that it will meet the vast majority of general purpose user needs.
It's a bit of a different approach than I have seen elsewhere, but I
think it works particularly well for moving images. One of the main
reasons I think this is because of the types of expressions that
predominate in commercial moving images. I will try to explain some
of my thoughts on types of expressions below.
1. Expressions that can be reduced to controlled vocabulary options
These are the most common types of commercial moving image
expressions, especially in the DVD era. They are distinguished by
characteristics that such as
Soundtrack language(s)
Subtitle language(s)
Accessibility options (captioning, SDH, and audio description)
Aspect ratio (although in this era of widescreen TVs, full screen
modifications are less common)
Colorization
Soundtracks for silent films
These can be full described based on standardized data (although for
the silent film soundtracks, this would involve multiple pieces of
information, i.e., musical work, composer, conductor, performer(s),
etc.)
DVD often contain what essentially are multiple expressions in that
they offer multiple soundtrack and subtitle options and may offer
multiple aspect ratios. A silent film on DVD may come with alternate
soundtracks. All of these can be combined in various ways by the
viewer, which can make for a large number of expressions contained
in a single manifestation.
2. Named expressions
These are versions that are different in moving image content due to
have been edited differently. Examples include
Theatrical release
Director's cut
Unrated version
Although Martha Yee found a strong correlation between differences
in duration and the likelihood that two things represented two
different expressions, this doesn't always work. The archetypical
example of Blade Runner was released on DVD with five different
versions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Versions_of_Blade_Runner),
all of which had run times within a few minutes of each other. These
types of expressions would benefit from their own identifier and
some sort of separate display. In public and academic libraries,
this type of moving image expression is far less common than the
first type. There are no examples of this type of expression in our
sample data.
Many more subtle expressions of this type cannot practically be
identified by the individual library cataloger because the
publishers do not provide the necessary information. Many films
released on DVD have been remastered or restored or modified in some
way, but it is not clear how to usefully or consistently record this
information even when it is provided in some form. For example, it
sometimes seems like every release of the Star Wars films must be
slightly different, but the videos don't come labeled in any way
that's useful for identifying them. There is a page at Wikipedia
tracking some changes
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_changes_in_Star_Wars_re-releases) and
an enormous thread on the release of the original theatrical
versions
(http://sideshowcollectors.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12157).
3. Manifestations with additional content
Many manifestation could be considered to be new expressions because
of the presence of additional content. These types of expression
don't affect the content of the moving image work itself. These
additions could be potentially treated in a couple ways and the
decisions of individual cataloging agencies are likely to vary.
a) Additional content recognized as a work in its own right
Any additional content is theoretically a work in its own right, but
there is a cost-benefit analysis involved in deciding to treat it
that way. In some cases, DVDs come with bonus features that contain
content that the library might potentially have bought (or has
already bought) independently. These would benefit from being
described as separate works. There are a couple examples of this in
our data set. If you do a search for Citizen Kane, you'll get the
movie plus a TV documentary called The Battle Over Citizen Kane.
Both of these have been issued separately, but the manifestation
listed as " DVD (2001)" under both titles represents the same
manifestation, which includes the TV documentary as supplementary
content. Whether it is necessary to inform users in some way that
these are on the same disc at this point or not, I am not sure.
b) Undifferentiated additional content listed with the manifestation
DVDs often come with an abundance of special features, most of which
are probably not worth the time it would take to describe them as
separate works. We have not included any of this type of information
in the demo, but one possibility would just be to list the content
with each manifestation.
Merging the expression and manifestation facets gave us a simpler
interface and we don't think it harms most viewer's ability to find
what they want. The four levels of FRBR make a lot of sense from a
theoretical perspective (although it is easy to see that there often
are multiple layers of expressions and that works have many
recursive relationships). For moving images, in many cases, users
care more about the manifestation format (DVD vs. VHS vs. Blu-ray
vs. streaming) than about expression characteristics.
There is also not always a hard and fast line between what goes in a
record as expression and manifestation information. For example,
Criterion Collection is generally recorded as a publisher. However,
for many users, it likely serves as a proxy for expression since
Criterion is known for the quality of its videos. According to their
website, "Every time we start work on a film, we track down the best
available film elements in the world, use state-of-the-art telecine
equipment and a select few colorists capable of meeting our rigorous
standards, then take time during the film-to-video digital transfer
to create the most pristine possible image and sound. Whenever
possible, we work with directors and cinematographers to ensure that
the look of our releases does justice to their intentions."
(http://www.criterion.com/about_us)
Well, that was a bit of a long-winded reply and didn't really answer
your question, but I hope it was helpful in framing what we're
trying to do. This is still very much an experiment and there are a
number of data modeling problems that I glossed over in order to
make the demo work, but which would have to be resolved for a
larger-scale application.
Kelley
Karen Coyle wrote:
Kelley,
do you have somewhere documentation on which properties/attributes are
associated with each FRBR entity? I ask this in part out of my
ignorance of moving image cataloging, and therefore I am having
trouble translating from the FRBR documentation to what appears in
your prototype. I did my usual search on "seven samurai" and the
display (which I assume represents the Work) reads (in part):
Alternate Title:
Seven Samurai
Director:
Kurosawa, Akira, 1910-1998
Genres:
Feature; Fiction; Drama;
Language:
Japanese
Country:
Japan
Original Aspect:
Full screen ( 1.37:1 )
Run Time:
206
Color:
B&W
Sound:
Sound
I'm curious as to which are Work attributes and which are Expression
attributes. Also, is there an example that shows one work and multiple
expressions?
kc
--
Karen Coyle
[email protected] http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet
