Quoting "McGrath, Kelley C." <kmcgrath_at_BSU.EDU>:
>
> Kelley: The project I am working with is focused on moving images.
> An obvious source of reliable identifiers that is fairly
> comprehensive for the territory it intends to cover is IMDB. I
> wonder, though, since we will have to create identifiers of some
> sort for our project anyway if it might not make more sense for us
> to maintain a complete set of identifiers and just map to external
> identifiers?
It seems inevitable to me that there will be internal identifiers
within a system, and external identifiers that one can map to. As you
mention in your post, one does not have control over the external
identifiers, so their equivalence to the internal identifier is
approximate. However, publicly known identifiers serve as evidence of
the identity, if not the identity itself.
I also think that it serves to hedge ones' bets and include all
relevant identifiers. For print manifestations, the OCLC number, the
ISBN and the LCCN, as well as an identifier from, say, Open Library or
Library Thing, all provide some evidence to its identity. This
evidence adds up as more identifiers are added. It also can become
murky, but at least for now I don't think that murkiness can be avoided.
This puts us at the "civil trial" level -- preponderance of the
evidence -- rather than the criminal trial level -- without a doubt.
>
> Apocalypse Now and Apocalypse Now Redux present a similar situation,
> but in this case both the library uniform title and IMDB consider
> them a single work. The authority record quotes IMDB as saying
> "Apocalypse now; 1979 film directed by Francis Ford Coppola; also
> known as: Apocalypse now redux; 2001 release, longer version."
This is where the issue of "who" is making the assertion of identity
matters. Different communities will arrive at different decisions
about identity for reasons of their own -- like the fact that
libraries add the ISBN for the paperback version onto the record for
the hardback, simply because adding a different record doesn't serve
the user. Publishers will keep those separate because they are
different products with different prices, although Amazon will link
them together to expand its offerings to potential customers.
I think of this as being like PageRank -- it's not just that it's a
link, it matters who is making the link. For us, it's not just that
it's an identifier, it also matters whose identifier it is.
kc
--
Karen Coyle
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet
Received on Mon Nov 23 2009 - 12:35:46 EST