Did you ever work in a music library? At least 90% of the questions there are of the sort "I need a score with piano accompaniment of Mozart's Magic Flute." That's an expression of a work. Patrons have no idea (and need none) that they are asking for an expression of a work, but if the catalog doesn't show this relationship, they can't find what they need.
A while back at one upgrade of our online catalog, our Web catalog temporarily lost display of uniform titles (precisely what gives the expression and work information, collocated, as things stand currently). Faculty complained loudly that they couldn't find anything. Students also couldn't find anything, as evidenced by greatly increased traffic at our music reference desk, though they didn't complain so loudly. We catalogers complained to the techies, who restored the display of uniform titles. All of a sudden, people could find things again.
Jean Harden
Music Catalog Librarian
University of North Texas
Denton, TX
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From: Next generation catalogs for libraries [NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Bernhard Eversberg [ev_at_BIBLIO.TU-BS.DE]
Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2009 1:55 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Tim Berners-Lee on the Semantic Web. Alternatives.
...
Collocation by work and expression is just not a very widely and
frequently needed task at the end-users end! (Or prove me wrong.)
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Received on Thu Oct 22 2009 - 10:59:45 EDT