Heidrun, looking at these examples (which naturally do not tell the
whole story) it seems to me that the authority records in your catalogs
do more than just establish preferred name forms; instead, they approach
what to me seems more like the description of a person entity. The
inclusion of information like the name of a spouse or the occupation is
more than one needs to convey the preferred and alternate name forms.
This fits in with some thoughts I've been having about authority control
and entities. Although the FRBR entity is called Person, the data is
really only about the person's name, not about the person him/herself.
In contrast, if you look at FOAF [1], the entity clearly represents the
Person, with the name being one of many attributes. Person entries in
resources like Wikipedia, Freebase [2], and Open Library [3] are also
about the person, not the name.
I have thought that a good mix would be to use the library authority
data as an identifier, but to connect that to these other, more ample
resources to link to information about the person.
kc
[1] http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/
[2] http://www.freebase.com/
[3] http://openlibrary.org/
On 6/7/12 11:40 AM, Heidrun Wiesenmüll er wrote:
Karen said:
I don't know what your authority records look like nor how they are
exchanged and updated. Perhaps that's another difference, and
something we could learn from German libraries?
I'll give you a couple of examples from the brand-new "Common
Authority File" (Gemeinsame Normdatei, GND), leaving out a few of
categories for the sake of simplicity. I include translations and
comments in square brackets. But basically, you'll find your way
through the records, as the format is now quite close to MARC authority.
One of the objectives of the GND was to have data structures which are
better suited for the semantic web. This is one of the reasons we now
have lots of subfields (for things which used to be only marked by
brackets or some similar method before) and many codes, which express
e.g. the kind of a variant name or the kind of a relationship. 1XX are
for preferred names, 4XX are for variant names, and 5XX are for
relationships to another entity. If the relationship is to a place
(say, a place of birth), this will go in 551 and get a code specifying
the relationship (e.g. "ortg" for place of birth; in German:
Geburtsort). If the relationship is to a person, this will be in 500,
a.s.o.
A person:
005 Tpv [code for record type: authority, person, fully established]
006 http://d-nb.info/gnd/118869159 [URI]
008 piz [code for an "ordinary" person]
035 gnd/118869159 [control number]
043 XD-CL;XD-US [country codes for Chile and the USA]
065 12.2p [GND classification code for literary persons; input only
if the person is also used as subject heading]
100 Allende, Isabel
400 Allende, Isabell
500 [Link via control number to authority record for]Gordon, William
C. $4 bezf $v Ehemann ["bezf": family relationship, "Ehemann": husband]
548 1942 $4 datl ["datl": dates of live, year only. Date of death
would go in $b]
548 02.08.1942 $4 datx ["datl": dates of live, exact]
550 [Link via control number to authority record for]Journalistin $4
berc ["berc": characteristic occupation, here: journalist. The "berc"
code is there to mark the occupation which is most useful to display
in addition to the name of the person]
550 [Link via control number to authority record for]Schriftstellerin
$4 beru ["beru": occupation, here: author]
551 [Link via control number to authority record for]Lima $4 ortg
["ortg": place of birth]
670 B 1986 [source: the dictionary "Brockhaus"]
678 $b Chilenische Journalistin u. Schriftstellerin; lebt heute in
Kalifornien [biographical information: Chilean journalist and other,
today lives in California]
A topical term:
005 Tsv [code for record type: authority, topical, fully established]
006 http://d-nb.info/gnd/4038953-4 [URI]
008 saz [code for a topical term]
035 gnd/4387112-4 [control number]
065 19.5 [GND classification code for meteorology and climatology]
083 T1---015515 [mapping to DDC]
083 551.5
150 Meteorologie
450 Wetterkunde
550 [Link via control number to authority record for]Geowissenschaften
$4 obge ["obge": broader term, generic; here: earth sciences]
550 [Link via control number to authority record for]Wetter $4 vbal
["vbal": related term; here: weather]
670 M [source: the dictionary "Mayer"]
Note: The true links to the authority records for broader and related
terms have been only introduced with the GND. Before, we had the
authorized form of the other headingmere textstrings in the
corresponding categories.
A work by two authors:
005 Tuv [authority, work, fully established]
006 http://d-nb.info/gnd/7668078-2
008 wit [code for a work]
035 gnd/7668077-0
043 XA-DE [country code for Germany]
065 14.1 [GND classification code for music, general]
130 Composing for the films [preferred title of the work]
377 eng [language code]
430 Komposition für den Film $v ÖB-Alternative [variant title,
marked as preferred form for public libraries]
500 [Link via control number to authority record for]Adorno, Theodor
W. $4 aut1 ["aut1": first author]
500 [Link via control number to authority record for]Eisler, Hans $4
auta ["auta": author who is not first author]
548 $c 1947 $4 datj ["datj": year of publication]
670 Oxford Music Online [source]
Note: Unfortunately, up to now we only have a small number of
authority records for works - only for those used in subject headings
and for musical works.
Before the GND, we would have had two authority records for this work.
The first one included the text string "Adorno, Theodor W. / Composing
for the films" and the second one the text string "Eisler, Hans /
Composing for the films", and both would have been applied to
literature on this work. So, this was fairly similar to the name-title
string. Now, an author is rather seen as a relationship, and this is
brought out by a link.
How do you like the format? I think it's really well thought out. But
there are also some drawbacks, as the new authority format in a way is
"too modern" for some of the library systems in use in Germany. So in
some cases, there are considerable problems in making use of the data
in the way in which it was envisioned. But then this is all still very
new, and I hope the systems will adapt in time.
I'll write something about authority maintenance tomorrow.
Heidrun
--
---------------------
Prof. Heidrun Wiesenmueller M.A.
Stuttgart Media University
Faculty of Information and Communication
Wolframstrasse 32, 70191 Stuttgart, Germany
www.hdm-stuttgart.de/bi
--
Karen Coyle
kco...@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet
