Re: Question about MARCXML to Models transformation

Quoting Ross Singer <ross.singer@talis.com>:


> http://open.vocab.org/terms/commonEndeavour
> http://open.vocab.org/terms/commonWork
> http://open.vocab.org/terms/commonExpression
> http://open.vocab.org/terms/commonManifestation
> http://open.vocab.org/terms/commonItem
>
> the point of which being that not all data is going to be modeled as FRBR
> (resources modeled as BIBO, for example, ignore the distinctions of the WEMI
> hierarchy) even though the FRBR relationship model is still just as
> applicable.

And I thank you, Ross, for that and for your clarity in this discussion.

Since my role seems to be to "voice frustrations" :-) I started a long  
and inconclusive thread on the FRBR list (which unfortunately does not  
seem to have an archive) about how we would link FRBR-structured  
bibliographic records with ones that are not so structured. I began by  
asking for the definition of a "thing" that encompassed the entirety  
of WEMI -- something that I could identify so that I could have an  
identifier that linked a full bibliographic "unit" to a bibliographic  
description that was not divided into WEMI (like a citation in a  
document). (That may be a mis-guided approach, but it's what I had in  
mind when I started the thread.)

This is an act of linking that I think will be extremely common as we  
link library data to non-library data in the linked data space. Yet,  
what is the right way to do this? Answers that were thrown out that  
seemed logical (the work stands for the whole; the manifestation  
stands for the whole) turned out to be contradictory. In the end, we  
seemed to conclude that mixing FRBR-ized and non-FRBR-ized data was  
going to be difficult, and we came to no solutions. This worries me,  
since I think it is one of the first things we need to do with  
linkable bibliographic data, and, oddly enough, we can do it better  
with MARC-like data than we can with FRBR.

I agree with Ross that trying to "instantiate" the FRBR conceptual  
model as a data model for linked data may not be the way to go. FRBR  
was not designed as a communication format but as a way to determine  
the "stuff" of catalog data for library systems. There is no  
investigation of systems functionality in the FRBR analysis other than  
FRBR as a possible (but unproved in practice) relational database  
structure. As Jeff points out, it doesn't even describe how you know  
when you have the same work or expression or manifestation, a very  
basic function that we know will be needed. It decidedly does not look  
at the open universe of bibliographic and non-bibliographic data and  
the linking capabilities.

I still think it should be possible to model bibliographic data using  
the FRBR or RDA attributes but without the division into WEMI for  
Group 1 data. (e.g. the RDA generalized attributes) If you have a work  
title, well, you have a work title. You don't need a work entity to  
have a work title. (I realize fully that I may be wrong about this,  
but this is what I *want* to be right.) The predicates and objects  
should stand on their own without the separation (and separate  
identifiers) that WEMI entities require. Where this falls apart is in  
the WEMI-to-WEMI relationships, but I just figure there must be a way  
to solve that as a practical problem so that we don't have to  
shoe-horn everything into WEMI as separate entities.

Hmmm. I wonder what else I can be frustrated about before 8 a.m.? :-)

kc


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

Received on Tuesday, 8 March 2011 16:01:58 UTC