FRBR work and expression records could go pretty far to giving something like you are asking for, but it is not a sure thing that they would have to include dates to unambiguously identify a particular work. The date would be a valuable but not a necessary piece of information. To justify the need for the date of first creation (first conception would not be measurable in any practical way), a new generation catalog would need to be specifically defined and understood by users as a tool that would do much more than current library catalogs do. The by date sorting that you describe is more like a function of a subject bibliography. Do we expect a next generation catalog to search like Google and perform like Perseus for whatever result set we wanted? That sets a high bar.
Matthew Beacom
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From: Next generation catalogs for libraries [NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Eric Lease Morgan [emorgan_at_ND.EDU]
Sent: Tuesday, July 26, 2011 2:49 PM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] dates
On Jul 26, 2011, at 10:07 AM, Eric Lease Morgan wrote:
> I wish a next-generation library catalog would include a field for date, not the date of the publication, but the date the thing was conceived.
I understand the need for a date published in a library catalog, and I'm not advocating for one and only one date in a bibliographic record.
Instead, I want an additional date denoting when -- in all likely hood -- the idea expressed by the creator of the work was conceived/embodied. Put another way, I want to sort search results from older to new. Find all of Shakespeare, sort by date, and then I want to read the oldest one first. Find all things regarding New-Platonism, sort by date, and start reading at the end and go back in time.
--
Eric Lease Morgan
University of Notre Dame
Received on Tue Jul 26 2011 - 20:03:31 EDT