Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
> (And really, I think it all makes a LOT more sense if you consider
> those 'things', work, expression, and manifestation as sets of items.
> The FRBR document doesn't make that clear, but neither is it
> incompatible with that conception).
>
> I think FRBR is both more and less than people seem to be assuming. It
> is simply a domain model for the bibliographic universe, which
> establishes that there IS a thing called a work, and it matters.
>
Unfortunately, the FRBR definition of work may not be the one that users
desire. And that's the main problem with WEMI. If a user goes looking
for War and Peace, odds are seeing all of the various translations isn't
going to be useful. But that's what W gets them. What they really need
is E. They MAY, however, be interested to know that it's been made into
a movie. FRBR doesn't include that in the W. Users have a concept of
series that isn't included in library catalog, that is things like the
Harry Potter books, or mysteries with the same detective. WEMI doesn't
cover that.
I think WEMI may be a model for the creation of individual records, but
there are extended relationships between resources that are the ones of
interest to users. The WEMI structure is kind of background, the
scaffolding that helps catalogers create records for items. But it's a
cataloging view, not a user view. The question is: what should we be
offering to users?
Recent studies conclude that users like "evaluative" information. I
haven't seen a good definition of that, but I assume it includes things
like reviews, rankings, and "users who liked this also liked...". I
suspect that something like "other books with these characters..." "...
books that cite this book..." and a number of other pointers and links
would fall into this category.
We need a better idea of what we want to do with the records before we
accept or condemn FRBR, because it's only valuable if it helps us do
what we want to do for the user. If WEMI ends up being a good scaffold
for everything from scholarly investigate to summer reading groups, then
great, let's go for it. But if it gets in our way... we have to change
it. I think we should be focusing on the part of FRBR that is likely to
be of more use to information seekers, and that is the rich set of
relationships between resources. Because those aren't structural, we
should be able to expand them as needed to serve our users.
My gut feeling is that the main importance of WEMI is that it provides
that underlying structure, but even more important is that we have
strongly defined data elements whose use is clearly understood. Exactly
where each element fits into WEMI may not be of the greatest importance.
We know that some communities have stricter definitions of W than
others. For this reason WEMI may need to be variable, but the data
elements need to be understandable no matter where the community places
them in WEMI. I think that the relationships between bibliographic
elements and segments will tell us more than the WEMI structure. "Is a
translation of" is a E->W relationship. "Is an adaptation of" is a W->W
relationship. (OK, this doesn't always hold, but where it doesn't, maybe
it doesn't matter to the user.)
Sorry, this rambled. I need another cup of tea.
kc
--
-----------------------------------
Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
------------------------------------
Received on Wed Oct 21 2009 - 11:53:34 EDT