Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
> Yes, FRAD I have significant concerns about FRAD fundamentally, I
> agree. It is not right.
>
> I just still don't understand your concerns on FRBR itself. It seems
> pretty good to me. It seems a lot better than nothing. It was based on
> formalizing 100 years of cataloging practice, and I think this is the
> right way to go. Sure, it needs some tweaks, perhaps a whole lot of
> tweaks, but it's fundamental basis seems sound to me.
>
> What is the actual alternative to going ahead with FRBR? Another 10
> years of dickering around and not going forward obviously isn't a
> solution. You and I (if not some) agree that tinkering with AACR2 as
> rules for creating narrative text without an underlying formalized
> model isn't a solution (although not everyone in this discussion
> does). So... what?
> Jonathan
OK, I had an insight about FRBR in the middle of the night last night.
(There has to be some advantage to growing older and sleeping poorly.)
It goes like this:
There is nothing to hold WEMI together. They are completely disjoint,
conceptually and factually. They can only function if held together as a
record. The other entities (person, place, topic, etc.) integrate with WEMI.
Back to my Kroptkin example:
The Work has these elements:
Author: Kropotkin, Petr Alekseevich, kni?az?, 1842-1921.
Work Title: Conquête du pain.
Topic: Communism
There will be a person entity linked to the Work:
Person: Kropotkin, Petr Alekseevich, kni?az?, 1842-1921
There will be a topic entity linked to the Work:
Topic: Communism
These properties link the Work entity with the person and topic entities.
My Manifestation for the book has:
Title: The Conquest of Bread
Statement of responsibility: by Peter Kropotkin
Place of publication: New York
Publisher:Vanguard Press
Date of publication:1926
There is no logical connection between the Manifestation and any other
WEMI entity. And it doesn't stand alone. Yes, I could add some
identifiers, but they aren't inherent in the data itself so they would
have to be artificial and not easily sharable.
My guess is that the creators of FRBR were thinking along the lines of
MARC -- a single bibliographic record with authority records for
controlled headings. WEMI represents a single thing with four parts, not
four things. That may help catalogers develop the record, and it may
make it possible to merge groups of records into an interesting
structure within, say, a single database, but you can't unleash WEMI
into open space as individual entities and have them connect to each
other. You CAN do that with W and Person and Topic, because they are
logically interlinked by properties.
Now the question is: can we fix this, or is it inherent in the data we
are working with? I have to hope for another sleepless night.
kc
--
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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
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Received on Thu Oct 22 2009 - 10:06:02 EDT