James said:
>The structure of the card catalog allowed people to do the FRBR user
>tasks (where--for those who understood--people really and truly could
>find/identify/select/obtain works/expressions/manifestation/items by
>their authors/titles/subjects (or at least they could if the catalogers
>had done their jobs correctly).
I am second to none in deploring the loss of some features of the card
catalogue. But in addition to cataloguers doing their job, those
cards had to be filed. At the end of the card catalogue era, this was
becoming increasingly difficult in larger academic institutions. Some
student filers were dumping cards rather that filing them. Escaping
card filing was a major improvement provided by OPACs, right up there
with keyword searching. In Canada, micro or print catalgues produced
by Utlas ending filing for many libraries prior to OPACs.
I agree with your basic position on FRBR. If I want an English
translation of a work, why would I want to know about the original and
other translations? Certainly I am not interested in knowing about
resources not in the collection, when looking for immediate access.
Few libraries for which we catalogue would have the array of related
expressions and manifestations to display.
Since in Bibframe translations are different works rather than
different expressions of one work, FRBR does not seem to be central to
Bibframe's structure, although there will be links relating these
works. Unfortunately, FRBR and WEMI organization of RDA do make RDA
difficult to comprehend. Theory trumped pragmatism.
__ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod (m...@slc.bc.ca)
{__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
___} |__ \__________________________________________________________
