RE: [open-bibliography] MARC Codes for Forms of Musical Composition

Quoting "Young,Jeff (OR)" <jyoung@oclc.org>:


>
> Barbara believes the concept of "book" is ambiguous. I believe her.   
> As far as I know, FRBR does not resolve this conflation by   
> encouraging us to believe a "book" is a "manifestation".

It seems to me that we've run into the "content v. carrier" issue,  
something that RDA has attempted to clarify (for the first time in  
library data, AFAIK). When a person says: "That was a great book" are  
they referring to the content (the story) or the fact that what they  
read had pages and a cover? In a sense, they may mean both. But the  
same person could have read "the book" on a Kindle. Now something  
changes. The content is the same, the carrier has changed. The person  
has still read a book.

It is only library cataloging that separates out Work Expression  
Manifestation. Those distinctions aren't meaningful in "real life",  
although they may come into play:

"I am reading Proust in English" (translation + expression)
"Order 7 copies of that book" (Manifestations)

A key point is that you truly cannot separate WEMI - they are aspects  
of a whole. There is no manifestation without expression, no  
expression without work.
In fact, the only one that seems to be able to stand alone is work.  
("Professor X is an expert in Moby Dick"). IMO, WEMI will remain a  
library cataloging concept, and everyone else will have "books" --  
which sometimes may have translators and publishers, and other times  
will only have an author and a title. It will depend on the context.

kc

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

Received on Friday, 9 July 2010 14:48:52 UTC