To my posting,
>
> Many people need to be better informed first about FRBR and its
> goals, and problems of its implementation.
> I see one big problem, and that is the linking of records. Up until
> now, there are no record links other than the "textual" ones in MARC
> records as they are. Using control numbers for linking presents a
> much bigger challenge, esp. in data exchange and sharing. But if this
> challenge cannot be met, I'm afraid there can be only half-hearted
> FRBR implementations, far from the full potential of the concept.
> Another big problem is that we need to be more specific about
> indexing. What is to be indexed and precisely how? A distinction must
> be made (and it presently is not being made) between an index(1) that
> is never displayed as such but only consulted by search software, and
> an index(2) that can be displayed and used for browsing. For headings
> (names and subjects) and also titles the latter has much potential but
> too little prominence in existing systems. See Martha Yee's work.
>
Jim Weinheimer asked:
>> What do you mean by linking here?
I mean E-R linking - establishing relationships between entities.
Where MARC now has a name or subject heading (100, 110, ... 650 ...),
there's just the text string of the heading. What belongs there to make
it more reliable and versatile is the control number of the authority
record.
And so with all additional fields as they might be required by RDA
to establish "relationships" between "entities". Any "entity" will
be represented by a record (or what else?), and a record needs to have
an address. (It can be wrapped into a URL whenever communicated in
an HTML page, but in essence it will always be a control number.)
MARC itself (or ISO2709) is certainly not the problem, one would simply
add a new subfield $w where it is still undefined.
In current MARC, there are no reliable means at all to link
bibliographic records with each other! We are badly in need of this
for whole-part relationships, like multipart records, and then all
the other work - expression - manifestation relationships envisaged
by FRBR and RDA. This has been known for a long time (Barbara Tillett
wrote her dissertation about it), but what has MARBI done about it?
B.Eversberg
Someone suggested to me I re-post this to the other relevant lists.
I'm either lacking the time or am not a member there, so please feel
welcome to do some re-posting instead of myself, where it seems
appropriate.
Received on Thu Nov 29 2007 - 13:46:28 EST