The little thought problem idea I threw out seemingly depends on a
central record store but, to be effective, requires participants be
able to edit the global record. If you can't correct at the source,
you have to correct locally. That's what we have today and it hasn't
really worked. Mix in FRBR and you instead get FUBAR.
But that brings us to the question that, spoken or unspoken, seems to
be at the heart of the matter: who gets to say what is "correct"?
In tag-based systems like LibraryThing, the wisdom of the crowd rules.
When enough people/libraries own a copy, a consensus of usage evolves
to establish the best tags to apply and what the relationship of this
item is to that item (social FRBRization).
But what do you do with long tail instances where there may not be
enough people/libraries who own a copy to develop a clear "best"
approach for cataloging a given record? I believe it is the case that
LibraryThing does nothing to "correct" how items are tagged by
individuals -- this being a matter of personal expression -- but they
do monitor how people build the social FRBR system of related works.
On the Library Geeks podcast, I seem to recall Tim and Abby saying
that on a few occasions, they have stepped in where people have
clearly made the wrong choices.
If, in the library world, a system evolves where global records inform
local cataloging instances, all the players (the participating
libraries) need to be able to edit globally so that all can benefit
locally. There are simply too many
works/expressions/manifestations/item out there for a central body to
effectively make the final determination. But if all libraries
participate equally, all benefit. The libraries themselves, since they
will receive bad changes along with good ones, could monitor each
other for quality. The central agency (in whatever form) would exist
to host the source records and provide (rare) oversight on errors.
Back to lurking.
Received on Sun May 20 2007 - 16:58:55 EDT