Dear all, Hello. I am having trouble trying to fit some aspects of RDA into a theoretical model in my mind. I recently delivered some training on FRBR and it was possible to explain everything in terms of entity-relationship (ER) models, at least as far as I understand them: [Entities] which have (attributes) and which have <relationships> to other [entities]. I hope my brackets in place of various shaped boxes make sense. I understand this should be possible with RDA too, but can't figure out exactly where Relationship Designators fit in. For example:
[Shakespeare] has the <Creator> relationship to the work [Hamlet]. If I want to specify that Shakespeare is the Author of Hamlet, does the relationship actually change to something more specific?: [Hamlet] - <Author> - [Shakespeare] In which case, does <Author> have a recognised hierarchical relationship to <Creator>? I would guess not as RDA clearly says the relationship is Creator and doesn't describe Author as being a relationship; however, looking at the RDA Element Registry, Author is given as a subproperty of Creator. Or, as they are termed relationship designators, does it merely describe the relationship: an attribute of the Creator relationship perhaps: [Hamlet] - <Creator> - [Shakespeare] where: <Creator> - (Relationship Designator) - <Author> What I mean is hard to write on lines of text, so I hope it's clear. Looking at the non-MARC examples in the Toolkit, the following is implied: [Hamlet] - <Creator> - [Shakespeare] [Hamlet] - (Relationship Designator) - [Shakespeare] with no logical link between the two statements. Ironically, perhaps, MARC binds the two clearly together using a single field, but I wonder how this might look either in an ER model (are the relationship designators attributes or relationships or attributes of relationships or something else entirely?) or some kind of generic RDF triples. The following clearly doesn't work for instance: example:Hamlet rda:Creator example:Shakespeare . rda:Creator rda:RelationshipDesignator rda:Author . Presumably, given the RDA Element Registry version, the following would do the trick (where Author is a recognised subproperty of Creator), although the Toolkit doesn't suggest this to me at all: example:Hamlet rda:Author example:Shakespeare . While I don't wish to make a fool of myself here, I do also hope that I am missing something obvious, especially as I am also slightly confused by whether Title is an attribute of Manifestation or if Title Proper is, or if they both are but again in a hierarchical relationship of some kind... Many thanks, Tom --- Thomas Meehan Head of Current Cataloguing Library Services University College London Gower Street London WC1E 6BT [email protected]
