Re: [RDA-L] Some comments on the Final Report of the FRBR Working Group on Aggregates
08.01.2012 15:24, Heidrun Wiesenmüller: Here are some more issues with the model of the Working Group, now centering on the concept of an "aggregating expression". The more I think about this, the less I understand what this entity is supposed to be in the first place, and what might be the point of having it at all. ... ... The bottom line is: These things are far from obvious, and should have been addressed in the Final Report. Holy cow, what a productive weekend and thread this has become! Considering that the issues as such are not new at all, for example look at this 1998 paper for the Part-Whole relationship: http://www.allegro-c.de/formate/reusep.htm But back then, the impact of this was negligible. One must by now be very brave indeed to expect a workable and satisfying and timely result from the Framework Initiative, and a practicable post-MARC, fully FRBR-compliant data model in particular. On the other hand, work records need not be invented, modeled, specified, programmed, and then painstakingly inputted from scratch. They exist right now, and in large numbers. Here are two of them: Text work http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no97079452.html Motion picture work http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no97080965.html After all this to and fro, I tend to look at the authorized work title as much like a subject term. After all, names of persons and bodies are being used for creators and subject headings alike, why not work titles in the same way? In a 700, the name is augmented with numerous subfields that - potentially - allow for a strucured citation listing displayed under the person's name. And there are all those 700 $a $t entries already. Create a new indicator for the 700, saying "this is a reference to a work", add $0 for the identifier, add a few new subfields (use capital letters if running out of small ones) for language, edition, type of expression, genre, and whatever necessary for meaningful groupings of entries under the work title. And all of that will cover a lot, if not everything, that may be expected from work records, like linkings with editions and versions (if you want, expressions and manifestation). This method is all you need, I believe, to bring together what belongs together and display it in meaningful ways as well as allowing for meaningful navigation in online catalogs. AND it wouldn't be a lot of work to upgrade existing 700s and turn them into work headings. We might also have new fields 605 and 705 instead of a new indicator for the 600 and 700. Therein, use $a *and* $0 or just one of these, depending on whether or not an authority record is available. And the aggregations? Simply use its authorized title as work title, after cataloging the thing itself like any monographic publication as it's being done now. You may contemplate any number of models that go beyond this, as this thread amply testifies, but I seriously doubt any such approach will be an economic use of resources. Economy dictates that we use what we have more extensively and in better ways. Sure, it is nice to have a complete theory, as it is fine to have a Theory of Everything for the elementary particles, but that's largely for the textbooks! A few particles are so elusive and hard to nail down that they are of no practical use as in electronic devices, for instance, Furthermore, others have already passed us by, inventing devices that do the job we expect work records to do, and not in very complicated ways either: http://www.librarything.com/work/1386651 note their canonical title, original title, ... B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Some comments on the Final Report of the FRBR Working Group on Aggregates
Thomas said:
>A collection of short stories would get the 650 heading, "Short stories" ...
In our shop, a collection of short stories would have that heading in a
655; only criticism of short stories would have that heading in 650.
Having it in 650 would exclude it from a genre index.
Many LCSH needed as genre headings are not yet established in LCGFT,
and until quite recently, that list did not exist. The subject/genre
distinction has existed much longer, and should be observed. IMNSHO
many music cataloguers continuing to code music genre headings as 650
(which we were required to do for one client) was a mistake, and will
complicate flipping them to new forms. The 655 0 vs. 655 7 is
distinction enough between LCSH and LCGFT.
RDA's subject heading section has not yet been written, but I hope the
*is*/*about* distinction will be clear.
__ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod (m...@slc.bc.ca)
{__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
___} |__ \__
Re: [RDA-L] Some comments on the Final Report of the FRBR Working Group on Aggregates
From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA] On Behalf Of Heidrun Wiesenmüller [wiesenmuel...@hdm-stuttgart.de] Sent: January-08-12 9:24 AM To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] Some comments on the Final Report of the FRBR Working Group on Aggregates >But at least, an aggregating work can have some of the >attributes which ordinary works have: certainly a title, a date, and the >"intended termination"; probably also things like intended audience and >context for the work. I'm not so sure about form of the work (the >examples in FRBR are "novel, play, poem, essay" a.s.o., which do not fit >here; but perhaps one could have "collection" as a form of work). The >aggregating work also has, of course, a relationship to its creator. So >there is some information connected with this entity which can be worth >recording. This problem also appears in the use of 655 genre/form headings. A GSAFD genre/form heading like "Short stories" (despite the plural form) is applied to an "individual work" -- in effect, a single short story. A collection of short stories would get the 650 heading, "Short stories" -- "Here are entered collections of stories" as the LC authority record emphatically indicates. There are also some existing lurking effects of aggregating expressions in RDA. The authorized access point for compilations of works are dependent on whether there is a single creator or not. If there are works by different persons, then the authorized access point is made using only the preferred title for the work (effectively the aggregating work). A compilation of works (which logically also means there's an aggregating expression) by one creator has an authorized access point that incorporates the creator's name. There is also a manifestation element, "Mode of Issuance" (RDA 2.13), that has a value "multipart monograph" for when a manifestation is issued in two or more parts (simultaneously or successively). This implies a connection to situations when there are multiple carriers (such as kits), which has its own issue for mapping to related Expression-level Content Type elements [see earlier postings on connecting Content Types to respective Carrier Types]. There are other similar issues related to accompanying material and Related Manifestations, where 300$e, repeating 300's, and 505 can be applied. The various conventions for recording the "multi-part" nature of the individual manifestations don't go much beyond structured or unstructured descriptions. One of the resulting problems is that there is a lot of lumping going in catalog records. A multipart monograph can have multiple expressions (an aggregating expression), or multiple works in the form of a compilation (which mean there's also an aggregating expression), and multiple carriers that carry different parts of the aggregating expression. One point that needs to be highlighted is that the report on aggregates specify the one unique relationship in FRBR-- the Expression-to-Manifestation relationship is the only "many-to-many" relationship in FRBR. All other relationships are "one-to-many" -- a work can have multiple expressions, but an expression can realize only one work. An expression can appear in different manifestations, but, uniquely, a manifestation can embody multiple expressions. Things get complicated with multipart monographs, which can have their own mesh of related individual manfestations, each of which can embody one of the expressions of the aggregating expression of the overall multipart monograph. Generally, explicit relationships, whether primary (vertical) or horizontal get squashed in all this, and much is left to record in notes only. Thomas Brenndorfer Guelph Public Library
Re: [RDA-L] Some comments on the Final Report of the FRBR Working Group on Aggregates
From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA] On Behalf Of J. McRee Elrod [m...@slc.bc.ca] Sent: January-08-12 11:53 AM To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] Some comments on the Final Report of the FRBR Working Group on Aggregates >Moving to title main entry for series seems a good idea to me. A >series under author duplicates the main entry for the single issue, >and authors of series do change. One of the first epiphanies I had when learning to catalog was in realizing that there are no specific rules for main entry for series ... because ALL the main entry rules apply for series. If the series is a monographic series, then the main entry rules for serials apply. If the series is a multipart item, then the main entry rules for monographs (those consisting of more than one volume) apply. One can build a main entry-based catalog out of RDA. But the difference is that RDA allows that convention to arise from the elements, leaving room for other and newer conventions. RDA doesn't pre-empt decisions about output conventions, and this is done by following an element set approach, and where the underlying entities that have always been talked about are consistently abstracted, and where there is a thorough accounting of all the possible relationships between those entities. For example, series are defined in RDA as work-to-work relationships, specifically whole-part relationships, and even more precisely through reciprocal designators "in series" and "series contains". The encoding system (MARC, 8XX fields) and the flat-file main entry conventions (authorized access point using main entry rules for series heading) are separate constructs that can be built out of the underlying logic that RDA enumerates. RDA starts by saying what something actually is, and then the conventions to use follow from this. By doing this one can see much better the strengths and weaknesses of any convention or system-- past, present, and future. Thomas Brenndorfer Guelph Public Library
Re: [RDA-L] Some comments on the Final Report of the FRBR Working Group on Aggregates
In article <4f093f5d.4070...@hdm-stuttgart.de>, you wrote:
>Actually, the thing Mac and I disagree about (but haven't had time to go
>into more deeply yet) is the question of main entry as such.
Main entry under creator seems a tradition worth keeping:
-in order to maintain consistency with scholarly citation (including
returning to compiler main entry);
-in order to colocate by author (particularly literary authors) in
single entry bibliographies;
-to maintain correlation between main entry and Cutter to colocate
authors' works on the shelf of the same literary genre or on the same
topic (apart from criticism and biography);
-out of consideration for technology have not libraries, who will not
have the linkages proposed to allow meaningful displays.
Moving to title main entry for series seems a good idea to me. A
series under author duplicates the main entry for the single issue,
and authors of series do change.
__ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod (m...@slc.bc.ca)
{__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
___} |__ \__
Re: [RDA-L] Some comments on the Final Report of the FRBR Working Group on Aggregates
Here are some more issues with the model of the Working Group, now centering on the concept of an "aggregating expression". The more I think about this, the less I understand what this entity is supposed to be in the first place, and what might be the point of having it at all. In the main body of the Final Report, the aggregating work is defined as something which happens when expressions are aggregated: "In the process of creating the aggregate manifestation, the aggregator produces an aggregating work. This type of work has also been referred to as the glue, binding, or the mortar that transforms a set of individual expressions into an aggregation." (p. 5). I've already pointed out that the aggregating work has really nothing to due with the individual works in a collection. It is something much more abstract, which I find difficult to put: Perhaps the idea of aggregating certain things. But at least, an aggregating work can have some of the attributes which ordinary works have: certainly a title, a date, and the "intended termination"; probably also things like intended audience and context for the work. I'm not so sure about form of the work (the examples in FRBR are "novel, play, poem, essay" a.s.o., which do not fit here; but perhaps one could have "collection" as a form of work). The aggregating work also has, of course, a relationship to its creator. So there is some information connected with this entity which can be worth recording. But now let's look at the aggregating expression. The Report does (as so often) not say much about it, only this: "Although every aggregate manifestation also embodies an aggregating expression of the aggregating work, these aggregating expressions may, or may not, be considered significant enough to warrant distinct bibliographic identification." (p. 5). Now looking through the list of attributes for an expression, I wonder which of them could be applied to an aggregating expression at all: Certainly not form and language, which in other cases are probably the most important attributes of expressions. But even if all expressions in the aggregate manifestation were, e.g., in French, this doesn't mean that the aggregating expression itself is French as well. Remember that the aggregating expression does have no connection at all to the expressions of the individual works (apart from the fact that it is embodied together with them in the aggregate manifestation). So an aggregating expression could not be used for e.g. distinguishing between different language versions. I also think that it would be impossible to apply the FRBR attributes extensibility, revisability and extent as they all have something to do with the intellectual content. I wonder what the intellectual content of the aggregating expression might be? Again, it cannot have anything to do with the intellectual content of the expressions of the individual works. It seems it would have to be a realization of the "glue" but I find that rather abstract and very hard to imagine. Some attributes still seem possible, e.g. context and use restrictions, if one feels that this is worth recording. I'm also wondering if an aggregating expression could have a relationship to a person or corporate body which is not the creator of the aggregating work... Anyhow this makes me feel that the aggregating expression is rather an empty concept. Perhaps it's only there in order to adhere to the basic WEMI principle. Also, what happens if, say, there is a second edition of a collection with the same essays but in a revised form? I assume that there would still be the same aggregating work involved. But would there be a new aggregating expression? I feel this can't be, as the aggregating expression is - as I said before - not really connected to the expressions of the individual works. So perhaps the correct modeling would have to have _one_ aggregating work and _one_ aggregating expression which is embodied in two different manifestations. If this is the right picture (and it may be not as the report doesn't say). I don't quite see in what way an entity such as this could be at all useful. Another point open to debate are boundaries between one aggregating work and another. Think of textbooks which are sold over a long period of time. The compilers (creators) may change over time, and the chapters (by individual authors) may not only be continuously revised, but there may be new chapters added, old ones abandoned, new authors introduced. Now is all of this still the same aggregating work (I feel it should be) or not? And how would that have to be modeled - one aggregating work and one aggregating expression again? Would that be helpful for real life cataloging? Sorry about this longish and slightly confused mail which has probably screwed up the minds of those who have actually followed my train of thoughts. The bottom line is: These things are far fr
Re: [RDA-L] Some comments on the Final Report of the FRBR Working Group on Aggregates
Karen Coyle wrote: What type of entity would be "part" be? I'm thinking that there is no such entity as "part" but that a work can be a "is part" of another work. Taking into account that the work is a single entity that may be related to any number of expression/manifestations it cannot be "secondary" since that is what it is only in relation to the manifestation being cataloged. Primary and secondary, therefore, have to be relationships. In a sense, a Work is always whole, even if it is part of another work. If it didn't have "wholeness" it couldn't be a work. (...) Yes, that is how I imagine the graph to "grow." But I guess I'm not sure what the "part" box is in your model -- it appears to be a Work that has the characteristic of being a part of the aggregate. Good point. I think you're right that my "parts" also must by necessity be works (in the same sense that, say, "The fellowship of the ring" is a work in itself, which at the same time is placed in a whole/part relationship with "The lord of the rings"). So in the Nabokov example I don't have only three works (the two individual works plus the aggregate work, which has two parts), as I claimed before, but rather five works: the two individual works, the aggregate work and the two "part works". I know that having "W1" and "W: Part 1 of Aggregate Work" as two different boxes next to each other somehow looks redundant, but I still think this complexity is necessary. Let's look as some more diagrams which I have just drawn: http://www.mendeley.com/profiles/heidrun-wiesenmuller/ (among the working papers again, called "Additional diagrams #2", or directly: http://tinyurl.com/6o2sh3k (sorry, it's more than 3 MB; next time I'll compress the graphics more). The new example illustrates the (fictitious) case of two "Selected works" editions of Jane Austen’s novels. Both contain the same two works "Pride and prejudice" and "Sense and sensibility", but one of them contains the English expressions, whereas the other contains the German expressions. The two aggregate works were created by two different persons, completely independently of each other. Now if you first look at figure 2, which illustrates a straightforward "work-of-works" approach, you'll notice that starting e.g. with the "Aggregate Work 2" and going downwards to the work "Sense and sensibility", you then have no way of knowing which of the two expressions to take (the English or the German one), and consequently, there is no way of telling which of the aggregate manifestations shown at the bottom belongs to this aggregate work. Compare this to figure 3, which gives the same thing in the alternative model. I admit that this is much more complicated, but at least it seems to work: Starting with the "Aggregate Work 2" and going downwards you first reach the two "part works". These are unambiguously connected to the expressions which the creator of the "Aggregate Work 2" really used for his collection (the German versions), and this brings you to the right manifestation. So I think we need to have this "doubling" of works, if we want to capture things like that. Now where are the differences between e.g. "W1: Pride and prejudice", "Part 1 of Aggr. Work 1" and "Part 2 of Aggr. Work 2"? It is as you thought: Most of the attributes will be the same, and also some of the relationships (e.g. the relationship to Jane Austen as the creator). I think there should be an additional attribute "aggregate" distinguishing between the individual work (W1) and the "part works". This would have to be newly introduced to FRBR, and it certainly needs some further thinking to sort out the details (e.g. do only the "part works" get this attribute, or also the aggregate work? How can we bring out the difference between "Part 1 of Aggr. Work 1" and "Part 1 of Aggr. Work 2", if both get the same attribute "aggregate")? Another difference - and probably the vital one - between the individual works and the "part works" is how they are integrated in the network of FRBR relationships. One difference is, of course, that only the "part works" have a whole/part relationship with an aggregating work. Another is that whereas, on principle, all existing expressions of "Pride and prejudice" are connected with the box for the individual work, only the expression (or expressions) really used for the aggregate work is/are connected to the "part work". A case where the "part work" boxes would be connected with more than one expression would be a collection of essays, which is republished in a revised version (including revised versions of the essays). Then each part work for an essay would be connected with two expressions. One thing I don't like about the diagrams of the alternative model is that there is, as yet, no direct line between the box for an individual work and the corresponding "part work" boxes. I feel there should be a relationship there
