Re: Open Library and RDF

Quoting Thomas Baker <tbaker@tbaker.de>:


> As I understand it, the FR and RDA approach is indeed to coin
> separate properties for each of the WEMI entities, in parallel,
> e.g., manifestationTitle, expressionTitle...

There are some properties that are aligned with more than one FRBR  
level, but the majority are not. I would need to look more closely at  
them, but although they may appear to be the same (usually based on  
their names) in some cases, in other cases they really are quite  
different "things." An example is the work title and the manifestation  
title. The manifestation title is the title actually printed on the  
item (using books here as the easiest example). The rules for creating  
a manifestation title are in section 2.3 of RDA.

The work title is an artificial construct created by the cataloger to  
identify the work. It is usually in the original language of the work,  
and for early works that appeared with numerous different titles it  
may be hard to determine what best represents the work. The rules for  
creating the work title are found in section 6.2 of RDA. (*)

Note that RDA does NOT have "title" as a property (although it is  
defined that way in the registry, I don't know why). If you look at  
the table of elements, you can see that "title" is conceptually a  
class. There are only specific title types that can be created in RDA.  
The thing I've called the "manifestation title" is actually either:  
title proper, parallel title proper, variant title, earlier title  
proper, later title proper, key title, or abbreviated title. Some of  
these might not meet the dcterms definition of "a name given to the  
resource" - for example, earlier and later titles are not names given  
to the resource but of other versions of the resource (although it all  
depends on whether you consider a serial that has changed name the  
same thing or a a new resource.... another lengthy conversation in  
library-land).

OK, I realize that this is pedantic, but I don't know any other way to  
do this. One thing that might help people who think better with  
diagrams than text would be to get access to the ERDs that were  
created in the process of building the RDA online system. They used to  
be on the online site but are no longer there. I have a few on my hard  
drive, although they are older versions that are surely not up to  
date. If anyone has copies that they can post, that would be great,  
and we can link from the wiki page.

kc

(*) I make lists and other chart-y things from the RDA registry that  
help me see the scope of RDA, and I put them on  
http://kcoyle.net/rda/. I will now try to make a quick pass through  
for "duplicates" of the type Tom mentions here, and will post them.




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

Received on Monday, 16 August 2010 16:31:32 UTC