This is a very important point which I personally hadn't realized (That
"AACR2" form of a name can differ, even when done scrupulously, from
library to library). This is important to systems implemenetors to
understand how things work so that systems--systems which are
increasingly going to be dealing with aggregate data from multiple
previously independent 'catalogs'--can deal with the data correctly, and
draw the relationships out that have been encoded by catalogers to
present to users in useful ways and otherwise inform user interfaces.
To me, this is a good example of how our current data landscape is very
difficult to comprehend correctly. Difficult for systems implementors
(who may not be catalogers, although they may, like me, have some
educational background and personal interest in cataloging) and even for
the mass of day-to-day catalogers who may not have Martha or Jim's insight.
To me, this is the importance of making a clear, explicit, formal model
like FRBR. At it's best, such a model says "This is the nature of our
data", in a concise, easy to understand way---and in an explicit and
formal way, not the implicit shared mental model not actually written
down anywhere way we currently have. (At least many of the things that
have become important are not written down anywhere that are easy for a
newcomer to find). This only works if such a model is _truly_ adhered
to by our other cataloging standards in an explicit way (I am encouraged
by recent JSC actions to align RDA even more closely with FRBR; I am not
encouraged by MARC's vague relationship to any conceptual model external
to it).
This is also why I am so confounded by the LC working group's
reccommendaitons to _stop_ work on RDA until some magical analysis of
FRBR is done (and the unspoken implication I get from the paper is that
they expect this analysis to result in abandonment of FRBR and creation
of a brand new conceptual model instead). To me, this is the kind of
thinking about 'monolithic standards' that other parts of the report
(and Karen Coyle in individual communications) are specifically trying
to avoid. We specifically _shouldn't_ stop our activities until we have
some perfected monolithic model to base them on. All these things need
to happen in parallel. If we haven't taken advantage of the 10 years (!)
since FRBR was first produced to do this analysis and repair--well,
we've made our bed, now we lie in it. It's too late to halt all
activities to try to go back in time. Stopping the momentum that is
_finally_ building towards bringing all of these standards and practices
into the contemporary era is exactly the _wrong_ thing to do. In the
"Standards 2.0" world, all these things happen in parallel---don't stop
RDA, because basing RDA on FRBR (and in particular the DCAM work that's
going on, not so much for DCAM in particular as for the rigorous formal
analysis it forces) _is_ one of the ways we test FRBR in the real world!
Jonathan
Martha Yee wrote:
> Jim Weinheimer wrote:
>
> ...
>
> I see that you have publication information in the expression record. FRBR
> does not have publication information as attributes of the expression, but
> of the manifestation. As you know, I have serious problems with FRBR's
> concept of manifestation, but I don't know if I believe that the publication
> info should go into the expression. (Although I realize this is the
> practical method for catalogers to determine different expressions/editions,
> as given in LCRI 1.0).
>
> Concerning the point below, coding a name as "AACR2 form" is not entirely
> correct since 99% of the time, AACR2 forms of name are based on the way a
> person's or corporate body's name appears on the first item cataloged with
> cross-references made from any other forms that come into the catalog later.
> Therefore, it is very possible that different catalogs, both following
> AACR2, could come up with different forms of the same name. Forms of name
> are linked to those used in a particular database, so something like "LCNAF"
> form would be more correct.
>
> Jim Weinheimer
>
> ***********************
> reply from Martha:
>
> Thanks for your comments, James...
>
> I have argued elsewhere (in the FRBR-ization paper that I cited in my
> initial posting) that the FRBR tables do not correspond to the FRBR entity
> definitions. If you are going to define expression as any change in content
> that does not lead to a new work, and manifestation as mere change in format
> or distribution information, it is absurd to map the statement '2nd rev.
> ed.' to manifestation. It is clearly a statement about expression. We must
> be willing to trust publishers' statements on title pages unless proven
> erroneous. The Yee cataloging rules represent, among other things, my
> attempt to remap the elements of a bibliographic description to the correct
> FRBR entities, thereby keeping the original FRBR definitions but discarding
> the flawed mapping tables at the back of FRBR. There is the question,
> though, of whether catalogers always have enough information to map all data
> elements to either expression or manifestation. I suspect that the original
> designers of the Anglo-American cataloging rules judged that catalogers did
> not always have enough information, so limited their collocation work to the
> work level (with main entries).
>
> The "AACR2 form" in the original post from Joseph Hollister referred to the
> fact that I used LCNAF numbers as key identifiers, so you are right that
> "LCNAF form" would be more accurate.
>
> Martha Yee
> myee_at_ucla.edu
>
>
--
Jonathan Rochkind
Digital Services Software Engineer
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886
rochkind (at) jhu.edu
Received on Tue Dec 04 2007 - 10:30:43 EST