This brings up the ambiguity between "genre" and bibliographic type. Having
worked on a number of different databases that primarily contain articles
(and that do not use the MARC format) I can tell you that one person's
genre is someone else's bib type. The "aa" (LDR 06/07) in MARC means
analytic, not article, and refers to any item that is embedded in a larger
bibliographic unit. Combined with the 773 indicators (if I'm remembering
correctly) you can distinguish between journal articles and book chapters.
In this sense, the MARC "aa" defines a bibliographic structure, not a genre.

I personally think that "article" should remain structural (and is better
defined as "journal article"). Genres can and will be loose and imprecise
and may or may not coincide with a particular bibliographic structure (the
classic example being "conference paper" which might be a chapter in a
book, a journal article, or a free-standing web publication). That said, if
someone wants to define a genre of "academic journal article" I suppose
they should be free to do so. I know that many people see academic articles
as a separate genre. To satisfy the points of view of a diverse set of
communities, "genre" is going to have to allow for just about anything
anyone wants to define (using the 655), but we should keep the structural
description more tightly controlled because it ends up driving things like
display.

kc

At 05:23 PM 12/9/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>Someone recently asked me how to designate in MODS that something is an
>academic journal article. In MARC, we would show that it's an article
>description by using a 773 describing the host journal and coding
>Leader/07 (bibliographic level) as monographic component part. Ldr/07 of
>course mixes both issuance and bibliographic level (i.e. collection vs.
>single) and we've separated these in MODS by having an element issuance
>with values monographic and continuing and collection=yes as an attribute
>to show bibliographic level. However, "article" can be considered more
>like a genre. The MARC genre list used in MODS, which was developed from
>all the different coded values for genre mostly in the 008s, does not have
>a value "article" as such, but does have "legal article". A number of data
>elements have specific coding for legal works, and this is one.
>
>So one thought is to generalize that term to "article" and take off the
>"legal". This would not invalidate existing MARC data, but would just
>generalize the term. If we did this in the MARC genre list we would also
>want to submit a proposal to do this in the MARC 008/24. Are there any
>thoughts about this idea, particularly in terms of impact on existing
>MARC records?
>
>Rebecca
>^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>^^ Rebecca S. Guenther ^^
>^^ Senior Networking and Standards Specialist ^^
>^^ Network Development and MARC Standards Office ^^
>^^ 1st and Independence Ave. SE ^^
>^^ Library of Congress ^^
>^^ Washington, DC 20540-4402 ^^
>^^ (202) 707-5092 (voice) (202) 707-0115 (FAX) ^^
>^^ [log in to unmask] ^^
>^^ ^^
>^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

*************************
Karen Coyle
[log in to unmask]
http://www.kcoyle.net