FRBR simply puts genre or form as an attribute of a work, expression, or
manifestation--no more, no less.
Things we call "genre" are generally an attribute of the work or
expression. Beethoven's Seventh is a "symphony" as a _work_, no?
On the other hand, things we call "form" are often attributes of the
"carrier", which is the "manifestation" level. "CD" or "printed score".
But it does get tricky. We could debate about whether "music for
orchestras" belongs to the Work or Expression level. I wouldn't
participate in that debate actually, not being a music librarian. But
the music librarians could debate it, and come to an agreement or
not--perhaps different people will disagree on whether a certain
attribute is of a Work or Expression. (To answer this, answer the
question: if the piece were revised or altered while still being the
same work---could the attribute possibly be changed? If yes, then it's
an attribute of the expression, if not, then it's an inherent attribute
of the work. I suppose there could be an arrangement of Beethoven's
Seventh for something other than orchestra, which would still be
Beethoven's Seventh, so that's one way to answer)
Exactly whether a given sort of form/genre description belongs at a
Work, Expression, or Manifestation---is tricky. It remains to be worked
out. FRBR doesn't have answers yet, FRBR just poses the questions. We
need to work out the answers.
On top of fall that, the fact remains after all of that: That we do not
have very good consistent vocabularies for form or genre! Rather, we
have a variety of inconsistent overlapping vocabularies for form and
genre in common use (LCSH $v; AACR2 GMD/SMD; RDA ; MARC fixed fields ;
more). This is a problem, but it's not FRBR's role to solve this
problem---FRBR just says that these are attributes of work, expression,
or manifestation, and further says that if they are attributes of
carrier. It's still a problem which needs to be solved--and is in fact
kind of FRBR's problem in the end, because our lack of a systematic way
for looking at form/genre leads to us being unsure if a given sort of
form/genre description is work, expression, or manifestation in a
systematic way.
Jonathan
Jean Harden wrote:
> This list is an excellent summary of one sort of user inquiry at a library that has music stuff. But this sticks to Group 1 entities (WEMI).
>
> How do we model questions that start at a more general level ...Do you have any 19th-century music, or Do you have music for orchestra, or Do you have symphonies, or Do you have scores? At first glance, the information needed to start at this more general level would seem to be in Group 3 entities (said to include Concept, Object, Event, Place), which are subjects of Group 1 entities. Beethoven's 5th symphony isn't *about* symphonies, though. It *is* a symphony. In music materials, "aboutness" plays a very small part. So where does FRBR put genre or form?
>
> Jean
>
> --
>
> Jean Harden, Music Catalog Librarian
> Libraries
> University of North Texas
> PO Box 305190
> Denton, TX 76203-5190
> (940) 565-2860
> jharden_at_library.unt.edu
>
>
>
>>>> On 12/7/2007 at 5:07 AM, in message
>>>>
> <28AD4F9DFF3DD649B26B3027C78FB67305F3A01D_at_icex1.ic.ac.uk>, "Stephens, Owen"
> <o.stephens_at_IMPERIAL.AC.UK> wrote:
> ...
>
>> Anyway, just to throw some more opinion in the pot, for me the FRBR
>> entities are a reasonably good approximation to levels at which a user
>> might make an enquiry about something in a library:
>>
>> Do you have Beethoven's 5th?
>> Do you have a score of Beethoven's 5th?
>> Do you have the 1971 Norton minature score of Beethoven's 5th
>> Can I borrow this item?
>>
>> This suggests to me that if we were to build systems modelled our data
>> in this way, it would be easy to build a user focussed interface which
>> could give answers to these questions.
>>
>>
> ...
>
>
>> Owen
>>
>
>
--
Jonathan Rochkind
Digital Services Software Engineer
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886
rochkind (at) jhu.edu
Received on Fri Dec 07 2007 - 13:02:26 EST