On 9/6/13 3:42 PM, Colby Russell wrote: > On 09/06/2013 06:08 AM, Karen Coyle wrote: >> The edit screen does not appear to allow one to input additional titles, >> although I don't think that the metadata format would have a problem >> with that. I will add this as a suggestion: add a field for "additional >> titles" -- this would be useful for many books whose titles can have >> variations. > > I know this from some edits I made yesterday: there are two fields in > Librarian Mode, one with the text "Is it known by any other titles? > (Perhaps in another language?)", and another "What's the original > book?", if you select "Yes, it's a translation".
I had no idea that was there. We definitely need more documentation! > > The whole thing is confusing to me, though. These fields are only > available on the edition's page, and not the work's page. For "Dead > Souls" <http://openlibrary.org/books/OL7084842M/Dead_Souls>, I ended up > putting the transliteration of the alternate title in both fields. I suspect that this is an artifact of the order of development, since initially OL only had edition pages; the gathering of editions into works was done afterward. > > I think this book is a particularly good use case for measuring whether > OL has sufficiently ironed out the issues here. There's enough here to > raise a few questions. Quite a few, actually :-). Some of them are OL questions, though, and some are "where should we put things?" questions. In standard library practice there is a place for everything, and everything in its place. There are also collective decisions based on rules, so everyone knows what the work title should be, or at least they know where to look it up (here in the US that's the LC catalog). There was great reluctance in the development of OL to establish rules for data input. I can understand that, since OL needs to be editable by anyone. However, it seems a shame to make each of the more conscientious editors have to struggle through the whole process of thinking through what the rules ought to be. That said, I'm not sure where to begin to develop a set of "answers" that are more oriented to the general public than the highly complex library rules that require training to use. If anyone has a brilliant idea about this, I would love to hear it. > > * The original title is variously translated as "The Wandering of > Chichikov", "The Adventures of Tchitchikov/Chichikov", or "Chichikov's > Journey". > > * "Похожденія Чичикова […]" is what appears on the title page to the > original 1842 edition (and at least 1846, as well). The use of "і" seems > to be particular to Ukrainian, though. and today the work seems to be > more commonly referred to as "Похождения […]" compared to "Похожденія […]". > > * Today, some letters in "мертвые души" may be replaced with their > accented forms > <http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D1%91%D1%80%D1%82%D0%B2%D1%8B%D0%B5_%D0%B4%D1%83%D1%88%D0%B8>. > > > * There are several ways to transliterate the title. One of them appears > in the handwritten text in the IA scan of that copy's title page. Here's an example of how that is handled in current US library practice: http://lccn.loc.gov/95038157 There are standard transliteration forms (I don't know anything about the one for Cyrillic) that are used, regardless of what is found on the book. In fact, an alternate transliteration, if found on the book, would become one of those 'other title's. Also note the existence of the Virtual International Authority File, that brings together these kinds of decisions from libraries around the world. Take a look at: http://viaf.org/viaf/183487532/ Unfortunately, VIAF does not supply a single display form. Fortunately, if we could make the connection, it does seek to provide a single identifier for each person and each work. Unfortunately, it is new and the identifier hasn't been propagated out to bibliographic data. > > The free form text field for the title in the "Yes, this is a > translation" area in Librarian Mode should probably go away. Specifying > that it's a translation and the source language should be sufficient and > non-destructive, given that the works page is meant to list all > editions... If it's known that the translator worked from a *specific* > edition (or editions) during the translation process, it would probably > be best to include an optional field for that, which can be filled by a > widget listing the editions in that language. But not a free form text > field. I doubt if we should go down the rabbit hole of translation from specific editions. We have enough problems as it is. > > Librarian Mode's alternate title field in its current form should > probably go away, too. The help text asks "Is it known by any other > titles? (Perhaps in another language?)". This is mistargeted, since if > it is, it's likely because there's an edition available in that > language, which should be listed on the work's page, anyway. It seems that the text there should be changed. It may be a holdover from earlier OL days, but I suspect that it is simply that the UI person didn't know these kinds of details. Best, I > think, would be to add a multi-valued alternate *titles* field to the > work's page itself, to list any other titles that don't come verbatim > from a published edition's listed title or subtitle. (This includes > things like the handwritten transliteration from above.) This should > prevent data duplication. For example, for Dead Souls, listing > "Chichikov's Journey" as an alternate title for every edition is > wasteful, since it can simply be listed as an alternate title on the > work's page itself, and every edition can chain up to it. > I see no reason NOT to allow additional titles on the work. We do, however, need to stick to a single "official" work title because that's what brings the editions together. kc -- Karen Coyle kco...@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net ph: 1-510-540-7596 m: 1-510-435-8234 skype: kcoylenet _______________________________________________ Ol-discuss mailing list - Ol-discuss@archive.org http://mail.archive.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ol-discuss Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/ol-discuss@archive.org/ To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send email to ol-discuss-unsubscr...@archive.org
