What makes you such an expert on the second objective of the catalog? Oh, right <http://ils.unc.edu/mpact/mpact.php?op=show_tree&id=2309> (1994 :-)
According to Madison (2005), the draft versions of the IFLA report had a "relate" task. In the earliest discussion document (drafted by Tillett in December 1993 and based on discussions with Svenonius and Tucker), slightly different terminology was used that denoted the functions of the catalog (i.e., identify, relate, assist in the choice, and provide access). By 1995, five functions were described abstractly with a user focus (find, identify, choose, obtain, and relate). While the “relate” function was later dropped in the 1996 worldwide review version, the final report notes its important role (in a sense a “fifth user task”) in assisting the user to relate one entity to another or to “navigate” the universe of entities represented in a bibliographic file or database. "Relate" would seem to have been a good home for the second objective. I'm not sure why it fell out in final drafts. In Barbara Tillett's dissertation, the "Shared Characteristic Relationship" was included in the taxonomy of bibliographic relationships, and "is the most pervasive of all relationships since it cccurs whenevern access point is duplicated" Tillet (1987, p.83). It is so pervasive that it could be explained in a single page, and was not covered in the empirical part of the dissertation. Interestingly, if one accepts some form of relative identity<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-relative/> , and starting from individual items, allow more properties to differ to form different equivalent classes, it is possible to derive many of all of the FRBR group one entities using only the characteristics that are shared. This is almost the same as "Near Equivalence" (Yee 1993). The idea that the different users may have different criteria for whether an item is "close enough" to match a request (and that the same user may have different criteria for different tasks) is identical. A musicologist with young children, who is studying the handwritten annotations on scores of scores may require every copy of a specific manifestation, from multiple institutions, in order to be able to do their research, but may only need "anything by Dr. Seuss" in order to be allowed to do their research. Simon References Carlyle, A. (1994). The second objective of the catalog: an evaluation of collocation in online catalog displays. PhD thesis, University of California, Los Angeles. Madison, O. M. A. (2005). The Origins of the IFLA Study on Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records. Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 39(3-4):15–37 Tillett, B. B. (1988). Bibliographic relationships : toward a conceptual structure of biblio- graphic information used in cataloging. PhD thesis, University of California, Los Angeles. Yee, M. (1993). Moving Image Works and Manifestations. PhD thesis, University of California, Los Angeles. On Thu, Jun 7, 2012 at 2:48 PM, Allyson Carlyle <acarl...@uw.edu> wrote: > > It's the second object that points to the need for collocation (authority > control): > > [The catalog should] show what the library has by a given author, on a > given subject, ... > > In other words, if I do a search on an author, I should retrieve all the > works of the author that the library has. He doesn't say it explicitly, but > I believe he would have agreed it would be nice also if they were in a > helpful (bow to Ranganathan) order. The second objective is about enabling > a user to make a selection from among retrieved items, not finding a > particular edition (first object). I don't believe we've ever had a catalog > (other than a book catalog, and it had its limitations) that has done this > effectively. Amazon et al. are also not very good at this. > > Cutter did not mention showing the works of a given author. I believe this > is because the catalogs at the time collocated the editions of a work under > author name, so he didn't need to say it (you can look at the catalog he > worked on at the Boston Athenaeum or other large book catalogs published at > the time for evidence). > > Lubetzky suggested an expansion of the second objective for the Paris > Principles to explicitly recognize the need for the catalog to collocate > the editions of a work: > > "[The catalog should], Second, ... relate and bring together the editions > which a library has of a given work and the works it has of a given > author." (He did not include subject because it subject access was not > included in the Paris discussions.) > > This object, the collocating (vs. finding) object, allows the user who is > interested in a particular work to make a selection from among the editions > held by the library. I don't read Chinese, so I select the English language > version, or vice versa. > > In FRBR and the recent statement of international principles, the first > and second objects were combined into a single objective/user task. I am > not sure that was such a wise thing to do - at least when they were in two > separate objectives people who think they are saying the same thing have > the potential to ask how they are different and so have the potential to > understand the difference. But, in some ways it makes sense, because they > are both about providing catalog access. In both, the assumption is that > the user wants and will end up with "a copy." > > Sorry if I misunderstood the thread, but I wanted to make sure that people > understood the difference between the first & second objects (combined in > the "find" user task) - they point to distinct functions. > > Allyson > > Allyson Carlyle > Associate Professor > iSchool, University of Washington
