Re: Comics and periodicals in schema.org (was Re: journal article for next call?)

> From: Karen Coyle <kcoyle@kcoyle.net>
>Subject: Re: Comics and periodicals in schema.org (was Re: journal article for  next call?)
> 
>
>For many years libraries used the rule that if a periodical changed 
>title it became a "new" or "different" periodical for purposes of 
>cataloging, even if the numbering was continuous. The reason for that 
>was that it was assumed that users would look under a specific title and 
>therefore expected to find that title in the catalog. This is being 
>re-thought (finally) because periodicals tend to change titles for 
>purposes of marketing even when the subject matter does not change. 
>(Sound familiar? :-)). Such title changes were so annoying that the 
>serials catalogers named their own professional journal "Title Varies."


:-) That's hilarious, and I sympathize.

The GCD also uses this rule, inheriting it from library usage as far as I know.  Specifically, we reference the indicia (or most relevant/legal-ish equivalent, if any) version of the title rather than the cover title, which often changes independently.  I could go through a bunch of examples but clearly you're already familiar with the problems.

Out of curiosity, what alternatives are being proposed?  The GCD avoided using cover titles because they tend to be even less stable, but they are more intuitive for casual users.  Sometimes we end up with "Indicia Title [Cover Title]" to get it to match searches properly.

In the long run, the general idea is to allow some notion of alternate title for transient changes, and use tracking links to stitch all the differently-named series together that are "real" continuations (no doubt a topic of many future arguments), and then you would be able to find all of the continuation series by searching a name that matches any standard or alternate title of any of the constituent series.

I'm not sure that's useful here- it depends on how detailed the data is supposed to be and how many of the most bizarre cases you want to be able to handle.  The GCD tends to try to handle them all, which makes uniform solutions difficult.

thanks,
-henry

Received on Monday, 9 December 2013 04:17:28 UTC