Re: [open-bibliography] New BNB sample data available

  Antoine:

In a previous life I served on a MARBI task group considering the 
problem of language in authorized headings.  The problem here is that 
the AACR2 rules allowed for the creation of 'mixed' headings, e.g., 
heading strings that included portions (usually separately subfielded) 
in different languages.  The group was trying to figure out how these 
separate parts could be separately identified as to language, but 
eventually we gave up on the task--MARC just wasn't set up to do that, 
and in fact every accommodation for the varieties of language and script 
used to 'patch' MARC up in some specific circumstances create their own 
particular problems down the line.

So what we have here is yet another 'holy grail' (compatibility) which 
may not be achievable.  Any default attribution of language will be 
wrong in some unknown percentage of cases.  I really think that our only 
hope is to separately identify what has been cobbled together for use 
within card catalogs, and move towards a faceted approach, perhaps the 
one that FAST has taken.

As for the separate choices made by BL and LC, I'm not entirely sure 
that agreement is required or even optimal, particularly given the 
differences in spelling everyone insists on retaining!

Diane

On 2/4/11 9:35 AM, Antoine Isaac wrote:
> Now, on having a language tag or not, I see your issue, but personally 
> I'm ok with originally Spanish labels being considered as English 
> ones, if there's no English translation for them.
> Anyway, the core issue to me here is that this language tag dilemma 
> also applies for LoC, which made the opposite choice. Ideally if you 
> publish data on LC concepts, it should be compatible with what LC 
> has--"compatible" in the formal but also informal way: whether there 
> is an inconsistency or not, a data consumer may still be extremely 
> puzzled why LC and BL can't agree on their concepts' prefLabels!

Received on Sunday, 6 February 2011 21:44:13 UTC