Ah, I think maybe I see more now.
To be sure, manifestation is a convenient generalization, just as
expression and work are. Just as different people or communities might
make different judgements about when two books-in-hand are part of the
same expression or work, different judgements may also be made as to
whether they are the same manifestation.
The FRBR document is quite clear that this is true of expression---that
the level of analysis to be _sure_ whether two items are the same
expression--if that means textually identical--is generally beyond our
practical capabilities for most publications, and furthermore that such
a specific technical analysis may or may not suit the needs of a
particular user community anyway.
Jim makes the useful point, if I understand him correctly, that this is
true to some extent of manifestation as well.
But just because this is true, it doesn't change the fact that
manifestation is still a very convenient and useful concept, albeit,
like expression, a somewhat abstract one that papers over some details.
I think actually cataloging everything only at the 'item' level (making
statements in the cataloging record that are only meant to apply to the
very concrete item-in-hand) would be completely unworkable! It would
make copy cataloging completely impossible, because every record would
only be about _some other_ concrete item in someone elses library, and
of no use to you with a different concrete item in your library! And
what we need is more rather than less sharing of records, no? It just
seems completely unworkable to me. To be workable, we use our judgement
to decide when something is or is not a representative of a particular
manifestation (often a manifestation already recorded by someone
else--this is copy cataloging), fully aware that this is a judgement and
not an exact objective determination, fully aware that different
individuals--or ideally different communities operating under standard
methods of making the determination--may make different decisions.
Learning to operate in a world where our data may originate from various
communities that use somewhat different standards for makign these
evaluations---and differnet individuals who must use their own judgement
in applying these standards--is something we have to do, like it or not,
to make the most of the world's production of data to better serve our
users. It is not to me a reason to adopt what seems an entirely
unworkable design of giving up on making these determinations at all,
and instead attributing all our descriptive cataloging only to the
particular concrete item in hand!
Jonathan
Weinheimer Jim wrote:
> Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
>
>
>> Manifestation is simply the entity that we have always cataloged in a
>> 'bib record'. I'm confused as to why you are claiming that there are
>> conceptual problems with manifestation, or that it's only a "virtual
>> view" in a way different than the other entities. To me, manifestation
>> is instead the fundamental entity cataloging has traditionally been
>> concerned with---to the contrary, I consider work and expression to be
>> essentially 'virtual views' of sets of manifestations, but manifestation
>> to be the fundamental entity. (And 'item' is something that generally
>> only rare-materials people are concerned with----traditional cataloging
>> has never been concerned with describing the item level, has it?)
>>
>> Are we understanding FRBR differently?
>>
>
> In cataloging, there has always been a problem of whether you catalog the intellectual aspect of an item, or the physical aspect of an item. There have been several problems in this regard, and technically, it is called "content vs. carrier" Cataloging rules have almost always concentrated on carrier and not so much with content. I don't want to speak for Martha, but that is probably why she said that "we have to believe the publishers" when it comes to edition statements.
>
> There are different states of a text that a book can go through. I remember reading about one of Mark Twain's books where he used "flickered" in a book, but during publication, he changed this to "flittered." No difference in paging, no difference in dates, or publication information, yet, if you find one of the 10 or so exemplars with "flickered," you can probably pay off your house. In library cataloging, we never look this closely, but the public often thinks we work to this level, or at least that we should. Therefore, I could get a book with the same title, publication information, paging, and series, and consider it to be a copy, while in reality, the text itself might be quite different if not completely different.
>
> How we determine a copy is based on LC Rule Interpretation 1.0 (http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcri1_0.html) or now the ALA publication "Differences between, changes within" (http://www.ala.org/ala/alctscontent/alctspubsbucket/webpublications/cataloging/newrecord/Differences07.pdf ).
>
> These give quite different guidelines for determining when something is a copy or not. An example is: there is a record with the same title, publication information, series, etc., but it has 351 pages and mine has 353 pages. Is this a copy or a new edition? In LC terms, it is very definitely a new edition and therefore gets a new record, p. 8:
> "2) anything in the following areas or elements of areas differs from one bibliographic record to
> another: title and statement of responsibility area, edition area, the extent statement of the physical
> description area, and series area. (For an exception relating to CIP items, see below.)"
>
> but in the ALA guidelines, it's quite the opposite:
> "A5a. Extent of item (including specific material designation). A different extent
> of item, including the specific material designation, indicating a significant difference
> in extent or in the nature of the resource is MAJOR. Minor variations due to
> bracketed or estimated information are MINOR. Variation or presence vs. absence of
> preliminary paging is MINOR. Use of an equivalent conventional term vs. a specific
> material designation is MINOR. For example:
> • 351 p. vs. 353 p. is MINOR"
>
> So, we have contradictory rules and we must decide which to follow. As you see, if we follow the LC rule, we can conclude that the physical items included in it have exactly 351 pages, but in the ALA guidelines, it's SOMEWHERE AROUND 351 pages. A big difference, especially when we are discussing different expressions.
>
> Now, as far as I know, the copy with 351 pages and the one with 353 pages may be the same expression, or almost, or whatever. In fact, I don't know if it's the same with just a couple of empty pages that got numbered or has some kind of substantial revision.
>
> It is important to realize that this is only one tiny, little point in determining the differences between content vs. carrier, but cataloging is based on many of these tiny, little points. When you include publication/printing dates, variations in almost everything, sizes, movies, serials, etc. etc. you can have all kinds of differences from one "copy" to another. But I would suggest that very few people care if Random Hourse or Blackwells or Wiley or Brill published a certain work/expression--they are much more interested in the expression itself, no matter who happened to publish it.
>
> One item may have:
> WAR AND PEACE
> LEO TOLSTOY
> and another item is exactly the same with all publication information, dates, paging, title and so on, but it has:
> WAR AND PEACE
> BY LEO TOLSTOY
>
> Is this the same item or not? Does the word "BY" make that much of a difference? In some rules it makes a huge difference, in others it is totally irrelevant. The examples can go on and one. The reason why there is all this variation is because we have to shoehorn everything into this "manifestation" record.
>
> Now, multiply these differences by varying rules and practices around the world (remember, the ALA/LC differences are both based on AACR2 and ISBD!) but others around the world are based on completely different rules, or they have their own interpretations of ISBD.
>
> I may be nitpicking here, but I don't think I am. If I am considering adding something to my collection and the record says 351 pages, while my item has 354 pages, do I just decide that it's a duplicate and discard it? If I decide to discard it, is this the best for our users? Would my users be angry if they found out what I am doing? If I have to get up, go get the book and look at the individual item, then the very purpose of putting in the paging becomes useless. If I follow the ALA rules above, my catalog record doesn't even tell me how many pages the items have in my collection.
>
> How does all this fit into the new formats? Yes, manifestation describes what we have always done, but are there possibilities of actually being more accurate by measuring expressions with word counts and file compares instead of the relatively inaccurate method of page numbers? Will we forever be forced to describe the physical aspects of a resource when people really want different expressions?
>
> Anyway, these are some of my concerns when we assume that the publication information (describing the physical item) determines the expression. I realize this is how it has been done from the time of the card catalog and before, but it is a practice that has always had problems and could be reconsidered with better tools such as word counts, and file compares.
>
> Jim Weinheimer
>
>
--
Jonathan Rochkind
Digital Services Software Engineer
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886
rochkind (at) jhu.edu
Received on Wed Dec 05 2007 - 11:34:07 EST