Non- and Partial-FRBR Metadata

I have a dilemma which I think is fairly common. I have bibliographic  
data that does not follow the FRBR group 1 divisions (work,  
expression, manifestation, item). These are entries in the Open  
Library database, which has two levels rather than four: Work, and  
Everything Else. (OCLC's WorldCat appears to have the same division.)  
I want to create a relationship between the Work and the Everything  
Else entity (using their respective identifiers).

As defined, FRBR only allows relationships from Expression to Work,  
and Manifestation to Expression. (I will gloss over Item because there  
is little item-level information in the records I am concerned with.)  
What I need, however, is a relationship between a Manifestation (with  
some Expression information) and a Work. The same Expression  
information may be found in more than one bibliographic entry so there  
is no true Expression entity that is defined in the data.

I have often seen pre-FRBR bibliographic data coded as "Manifestation"  
when in fact the data has elements that FRBR would associate with  
Work, Expression and Manifestation. This brings up more than one  
question (mainly: what does calling a bibliographic entity a  
Manifestation mean if there is no "Manifests" relationship? -- In  
other words, are the FRBR group 1 entities things, relationships, or  
both?), but on a practical level it seems that we will need to work  
with bibliographic data that either is not modeled as FRBR entities,  
or that models a variation on these entities. I'm thinking that some  
new classes and some new relationships may be needed to accommodate  
this.

Does anyone have ideas about the best way to go about this?

kc
-- 
Karen Coyle
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet

Received on Monday, 13 September 2010 16:54:07 UTC