Quoting Ben Companjen <[email protected]>: ). > > I was talking about roles that one can add to contributors of an > edition. They must be stored somewhere, because OL remembers what I > enter there. > http://openlibrary.org/works/OL16419933W/Een_kleurige_wiskundige_wereld > not only shows names, but also roles of contributors. The RDF > currently only shows the names. > Just to be precise: 'data element for roles for authors' = > /type/author_role ? It's too bad I cannot easily view the rationale > for each element, because I wondered what this element/type was > supposed to do and how this element/type is used. Or can I see it > somewhere?
Have you discovered the type lists, e.g.: http://openlibrary.org/type/author http://openlibrary.org/type/ shows the types that exist. > Oh, I missed the 700 field. But even if the record was imported > correctly, and it looks to me that all the other editions were created > from similar records, how does MoMA end up as the author? Was it > perhaps WorkBot then? At least one input source erroneously coded corporate names as persons - that is, it put the corporate names in the 100 field in MARC. They are then taken in by import bot as "authors". > > On a side note: I just had a wild idea: don't show the "by statement" > field on the edit form, not even in the librarian mode, if it is > empty, so that no one is tempted to put anything in it. That's a possibility. It's mainly there because it comes in on the library records, not because it's likely that anyone will fill it in. > It's just that I wasn't sure where the corporate identities should go > in the Open Library if I were to add for example a publication > "authored" by a government (no references to a human author) manually. > The same question arises when I were to edit the example of the MoMA > book about Mies van der Rohe (maybe not the best example, as Philip > Johnson becomes author and MoMA doesn't need to be a contributor). > Can I have an OL Work without author, and put the goverment or MoMA in > a contributor field in the OL Edition(s)? Yes, there are works without authors and that is legitimate. (e.g. Bible) > OL Edition contributors are > just saved and treated as strings (which I find a little > dissapointing), so entering a corporate identity there isn't a > problem. The RDF template outputs these contributors as foaf:Persons, > though. Too bad those are just strings. It would be ideal to have all parties identified. Many people will be authors, contributors and subjects. > > Your proposed field for "responsible organization" could help here. > But should it be part of OL's Work or Edition type? I haven't thought that through. >> >> Yes, it would be nice, but the data unfortunately doesn't always support it. >> The corporate entities that come in on 110/710 fields are entities in the >> library world and can be found in VIAF with identifiers. The publishers are >> NOT entities, but are a transcription of how the publisher or imprint name >> was presented on the title page of the book. The imprint name \= publisher >> name, so connecting these is difficult. Edward Betts did some >> experimentation around this at one point, but the results were very fuzzy. > > If we (users) want it, and if the data model supports it, I think we > can make the data support it, programmatically or manually. I'm from > the Discogs world, in which everything is done manually by people > mostly smart enough to match imprints (a.k.a. labels) to > entities/publishers behind those labels. Even recording, mixing and > mastering studios and the companies behind the labels (mentioned as > copyright holders) are matched. Guidelines and some rules are needed > there, but they seem to work. > Sure, Open Library is not Discogs and the world of books is different > from the world of recorded music (one important reason, I guess, is > that the former is much older), but goals of OL and Discogs are > similar (one page for every book/music record) and the means > (collaborative editing) are too. But I'm not here to just promote > Discogs - I like MusicBrainz very much too ;-) This is also being talked about in the library world. Identifying the publishers is tricky because of the various mergers, buyouts, etc. Keeping track of name changes isn't easy. But it would still be better, IMO, to take a stab at it. > >>>> >>> I would only consider putting a corporate body in the author field if >>> a human author is not mentioned in the book at all, which is very > > Just to make sure I understand you correctly: by "collaborator" you > mean "contributor" in the OL Edition? Or a role at the "creator" > level? sorry, "contributor" > I may have a look at the RDA rules (I had signed up for access to the > final rules in the trial period, but was quickly scared away by the > extent of the documents). It is scary. The only reason to look is to get an idea of the complexity of the decision-making. Even catalogers won't read it all the way through. >> > Sindice.com does some simple inferencing: it can add the superclasses > of resources in a search result. Not all RDF software will do > reasoning of course, but I believe in the world of catalogs there will > be useful software that does do it. And responding to Ross here, I think we agree, though, that identifying actual person data from agent data might have some advantages, so we should do that where possible. kc > > Ben > >> kc >> >> >> >> -- >> Karen Coyle >> [email protected] http://kcoyle.net >> ph: 1-510-540-7596 >> m: 1-510-435-8234 >> skype: kcoylenet > -- Karen Coyle [email protected] http://kcoyle.net ph: 1-510-540-7596 m: 1-510-435-8234 skype: kcoylenet _______________________________________________ Ol-tech mailing list [email protected] http://mail.archive.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ol-tech To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send email to [email protected]
