Dan Matei wrote:
> Work:
>
> Title: The Conquest of Bread (en)
> Title: Conquête du pain (fr)
> Title: ??? (ru)
> Date: 1892
>
Dan, this seems nice, but it isn't what is defined in FRBR or RDA. The
Work entity only has the "work title," which is the original title. So
you won't have these other titles in the Work entity. If there is a Work
with links to Expressions, then you could traverse that link and find
the Expression titles, which is what you have here. However, what I hear
from folks who do cataloging is that you are sitting there with the
manifestation in hand. If you aren't working in a large database, or if
you are the first one to catalog the item (those two situations are
functionally equivalent), all the information you have is on that book
you are holding. No info on expressions, no info on Work.
FRBR seems to work best when you already have a large database of
bibliographic data. You can then bring records together based on the
information in them as a collection.
When you say:
>
> There will be an expression entity linked from the Work, via "is realised through" relationship:
>
That sounds good, but where is that happening? Take my example: I have
this Kropotkin book in English. I don't have it in French and I don't
even know that French is the original language. What are the steps I
take to create my catalog record? Am I working in a huge database, like
OCLC? What if I am working in my local catalog?
I like the idea of relationships between WEMI entities, but I fear that
oftentimes they require knowledge that the cataloger does not have and
other records that the cataloger does not have access to. I also don't
know what those links will consist of. I think the FRBR folks had in
mind a relational database model (as Tom Delsey often says), in which
the DBMS has a "private" way of linking tables that isn't valid outside
of the DBMS. But that doesn't allow us to share those links, since in
each of our systems they are different. We CAN share names and subjects
because we each have the same link to the authority record (either the
authoritative string or the authority record number, usually the former
today).
It seems that to make WEMI work we need a universe of bibliographic data
that can interact. (Uh, linked data?) And that universe has to be ...
universal. If nothing else, a cataloger should be able to toss what they
have into that space and find out if there is more info available. It's
like getting copy cataloging from OCLC, but the copy that comes back may
be links to other entities. But names and subjects work already because
the links are there.
This essentially is my doubt about WEMI -- I can't figure out how to
create the entities in a sharable way that doesn't require there to be
one and only one system holding the entities.
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
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Received on Thu Oct 22 2009 - 10:56:44 EDT