Re: Book tagging: Amazon and LibraryThing

From: Mike Taylor <mike_at_nyob>
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 09:45:58 +0000
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
Tim Spalding writes:
 >> It's not the case that _Pride and Prejudice_ is on the shelf in
 >> the dining room; but _my copy_ of P&P is.
 >
 > I think there's a sort of misplaced Platonism in this concept. (This
 > is also my problem with FRBR.) There is no "Price and Prejudice" in
 > the sky, only copies situated in the real world.

I don't see that at all.  Just because the work _Pride and Prejudice_
does not have a single physical instantiation does not at all mean
that it's not real -- any more than the author Jane Austen isn't real
now that she no longer has a physical body.

 > "At mum's house" and "Victorian" may divide alone item/work, but
 > what about "English class"?

What about it?  It seems pretty clearly a property of the work rather
than of the item.

 > (The latter is very personal, but the physicality isn't
 > important--maybe you lost your copy and got a new one.)

Right -- which is why I argued that the important distinction here is
not between Personal and Public tags, but Work and Item tags.

 _/|_    ___________________________________________________________________
/o ) \/  Mike Taylor    <mike@indexdata.com>    http://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  "Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea which
         could only have originated in California" -- attributed to
         Edsger Dijkstra.
Received on Mon Feb 26 2007 - 03:51:03 EST