Re: Question about MARCXML to Models transformation

  All,

I had a bit of a flashback reading this section of Jeff's post:

On 3/6/11 4:15 AM, Young,Jeff (OR) wrote:
> The terms "musical work", "cartographic work", and various other
> rationalized "foo work" qualifiers imply subclasses of FRBR Work. I
> think it's worth attempting.
>
>> Expression
>>    - language of the expression (if text)
>>    - form of the expression (text, sound, image)
> Likewise, "text expression", "sound expression", "image expression", and
> other qualifications all imply subclasses of FRBR Expression.
>
>> Manifestation
>>    - title of the manifestation (may be different to the work title)
>>    - edition
>>    - publisher, date of publication
>>    - physical format (size, units, other measurements)
>>    - ISBN, ISSN, etc.

What I see happening here is a repetition of the development trajectory 
of MARC, where the attempt to separate description by the 'format' of 
the resource eventually developed into 8 or so separate element sets 
(for lack of a better word).  This turned out not to be particularly 
workable because so many multimedia resources started to come down the 
pike that weren't easily described under this separate regime, where one 
had to determine what the 'primary' format was before beginning to 
describe.  During the 1980s, MARBI spent many hours re-integrating MARC 
into a single set of descriptive elements that could be applied across a 
wide variety of resources. I would hate to see us go around that 
particular track again.

I think, too, that there's something a bit presumptuous about this 
particular group of folks (including me) determining for the specialists 
what it is they need to use to describe their stuff.  This is one reason 
I really think that the notion of application profiles is so attractive, 
because it puts the tools for developing a model and making decisions on 
the selection of properties into the hands of the people who really know 
what they're talking about.

Diane

Received on Sunday, 6 March 2011 17:07:07 UTC