Karen,
Among other interesting things you said was this:
"All of this being why I would prefer to have a "Resource" entity that has content and carrier, and a lot of relationships like "is expression of" and "is translation of" rather that trying to fit things like "color" into a single box."
And Jonathan said (among other interesting things):
"(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 want just now to briefly (that may not be possible for me) disagree with the set interpretation of the WEMI part of FRBR and do that in a way that connects to what I suspect is my own idiosyncratic interpretation of Karen's call for a "Resource" entity. So here goes.
I understand Karen's "Resource" entity to be identical with the FRBR "item." Rather than seeing the WEMI as a hierarchy of sets (each containing the one below), I think it best to flip WEMI so that we start with the item entity. The item entity is the most concrete and specific of the WEMI entities. Even manifestation considered as a set of interchangeable items introduces an new aspect of abstraction or conceptualization that is not part of the thing that is the "item." Manifestation, Expression and Work are best understood as sets of ideas we have about an item and these ideas about an item are, more or less, what I think Karen means by "a lot of relationships." In other words, the item is a real physical thing (even if intangible) and W, E, and M are not. The consequence of this up-side-down view of WEMI is that we can more easily think of W, E, and M concepts that we can define both abstractly and operationally in practical applications of the model rather than spend tim!
e arguing about what the true nature of a "work" is. So we may decide that a manifestation is a particular relationship (and I have no practical trouble with expressing manifestation as either an entity or a relationship--its particles and waves to me) between items. That particular relationship can be defined tightly or loosely, but it is more or less that these items share a production history that makes them more or less interchangeable: one is the same as another in both content and carrier. Although Work and Expression (and I would certainly add "superwork" or "work family" to W and E. as an obvious and useful extension to WEMI)are much more abstract than manifestation, they are still best understood as ideas we have about items. (Though it may be simpler in some cases to think about it as ideas about manifestations or expressions, that is just a shorthand.) Anyway, those ideas may be very usefully labeled relationships. So I think Karen's idea (or perhaps my misreadin!
g of Karen's idea) is compatible with the FRBR WEMI entities and their
relationships. The sets idea Jonathan mentioned is also useful and sometimes practical; its main fault, as I see it, is less the set idea itself that its application from the top down in a hierarchy of WEMI. I have no problem with thinking of a work as that set of all items that share the same author (meant generically to include composer, etc.) and an abstract but recognizable and agreed upon identity of content (which is by-the-way a huge issue and sometimes not many times but sometimes cannot be determined.)
The above may not make half the sense I wish it did, but it is all I can now. See how hard a time I have being brief? My apologies.
Matthew Beacom
Received on Wed Oct 21 2009 - 13:22:24 EDT