RE: Kill the Record! (Was: BIBFRAME and schema.org)

An item is a "copy".

 

Tom

 

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From: James Weinheimer [mailto:weinheimer.jim.l@gmail.com] 
Sent: Friday, July 05, 2013 8:51 AM
To: public-schemabibex@w3.org
Subject: Re: Kill the Record! (Was: BIBFRAME and schema.org)

 

On 05/07/2013 13:30, Ross Singer wrote:
<snip>

I guess I don't understand why offering epub, pdf, and html versions of the
same resource doesn't constitute "items".

If you look at an article in arxiv.org, for example, where else in WEMI
would you put the available file formats?

Basically, format should be tied to the item, although for physical items,
any manifestation's item will generally be the same format (although I don't
see why a scan of a paperback would become a new endeavor, honestly).

In the end, I don't see how digital is any different than print in this
regard.

</snip>

Because manifestations are defined by their format (among other things).
Therefore, a movie of, e.g. Moby Dick that is a videocassette is considered
to be a different manifestation from that of a DVD. Each one is described
separately. So, if you have multiple copies of the same format for the same
content those are called copies. But if you have different formats for the
same content, those are different manifestations.

The examples in arxiv.org are just like I mentioned in archive.org and they
follow a different sort of structure. You do not see this in a library
catalog, where each format will get a different manifestation, so that each
format can be described.

As a result, things work quite differently. Look for e.g. Moby Dick in
Worldcat, and you will see all kinds of formats available in the left-hand
column. https://www.worldcat.org/search?qt=worldcat_org_all
<https://www.worldcat.org/search?qt=worldcat_org_all&q=moby+dick>
&q=moby+dick 

When you click on an individual record,
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/62208367 you will see where all of the copies
of this particular format of this particular expression are located. This is
the manifestation. And its purpose is to organize all of the *copies*, as is
done here.

In the IA, we see something different:
http://archive.org/details/mobydickorwhale02melvuoft, where this display
brings together the different manifestations: pdf, text, etc. There is no
corresponding concept in FRBR for what we see in the Internet Archive, or in
arxiv.org.

I am not complaining or finding fault, but what I am saying is that the
primary reason this sort of thing works for digital materials is because
there are no real "duplicates". (There are other serious problems that I
won't mention here) In my opinion, introducing the Internet Archive-type
structure into a library-type catalog based on physical materials with
multitudes of copies would result in a completely incoherent hash.

This is why I am saying that FRBR does not translate well to digital
materials on the internet.

Getting rid of the concept of the "record" has been the supposed remedy, but
it seems to me that the final result (i.e. what the user will experience)
will still be the incoherent mash I mentioned above: where innumerable items
and multiple manifestations will be mashed together. Perhaps somebody could
come up with a way to make this coherent and useful, but I have never seen
anything like it and cannot imagine how it could work. 

-- 
James Weinheimer weinheimer.jim.l@gmail.com
First Thus http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/
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