Good answer, Cindy. I think the general case is that people tend to want only
the information they want-nothing more, nothing less. And for each person,
that specific information is going to be different.
But Mac's comment gets at the most pervasive misunderstanding of FRBR, a
misunderstanding that hinders its acceptance. FRBR is *not* about user
displays. At all. When you see the following illustration in FRBR:
w1 Charles Dickens' A Christmas carol
e1 the author's original English text
e2 a Tamil translation by V. A. Venkatachari
it has nothing to do with an OPAC record display. It is *not* saying that when
you display "A Christmas carol" in the OPAC, under that title you have an entry
for the original English text, then one for the Tamil translation, etc., and
force the user to see all of these related resources that most of them have no
interest in at all.
What it's saying is that the bibliographic data relate in this way: the
original English text is an expression of the original work; the Tamil
translation is another expression of that same work. Armed with that
understanding of the relationships, we can then work on improving the
bibliographic metadata and the discovery systems to help users better find the
resources they're after. But the way things are presented to the user are
*entirely outside the scope of the FRBR report*!
A fully "FRBR-aware" system might give the user something that has only the
following details:
Charles Dickens
A Christmas carol
And then tabs or buttons below, or menu choices on the side, or whatever, that
say things like:
Print versions
Electronic versions
Sound recordings
Other language editions
Theater adapations
Movie adaptations
And when you make those selections, you are taken to those related resources.
And this is exactly the direction that developments seem to be going. It's the
basic concept at commercial web sites at Amazon, Best Buy, etc. Anyone denying
that this is "FRBR in action" totally misunderstands what FRBR is.
Kevin M. Randall
Principal Serials Cataloger
Northwestern University Library
k...@northwestern.edu<mailto:k...@northwestern.edu>
(847) 491-2939
Proudly wearing the sensible shoes since 1978!
From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access
[mailto:RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA] On Behalf Of Cindy Wolff
Sent: Friday, December 06, 2013 3:23 PM
To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA
Subject: Re: [RDA-L] FRBR
"If I want an English translation of a work, why would I want to
know about the original and other translations?"
I think the operative word here is "I". What if
someone else wants to know, either a researcher or a library staff member
doing collection development?
The catalog serves many purposes
for many types of users on many levels, which makes it hard to fit into a
retail model of "I want it, here it is." The catalog is part of
the research process in addition to being a delivery mechanism.
Cindy Wolff
