There are varying approaches on this issue whether the record for the
digital reflects description of the original. Some institutions prefer the
2 record approach, others the 1 record approach. I think MODS is fairly
flexible in accommodating both approaches. It becomes more a question of
business rules. Also, if you use METS with MODS you have other approaches
for relating the analog and the digital. I'm not sure if you're also using
METS. For many of our digitization projects we generally describe the
original (when possible taking an existing MARC record and converting to
MODS). METS then allows you to link to the appropriate file(s) at many
levels as well as encode technical metadata in the amdSec using a
technical metadata schema and you could also include metadata about the
original in sourceMD.

But, again, it depends on your business rules, and MODS doesn't preclude
describing the digital if that's what you want to do. You are right that
we often add the link to the digital on a record for the original.

Rebecca

On Thu, 9 Sep 2004, Riley, Jenn wrote:

> Hello all-
>
> I'm in the final stages of preparing a set of MODS records for a
> digitized slide collection
> <http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/collections/cushman/> for exposure via the
> Open Archives Initiative (OAI), and I need to make a final decision
> about how to represent the digitized item (or any of the 4 [sometimes 5]
> versions of it!), as opposed to the original analog item. The MODS
> records are not being converted from MARC - I'm converting them from a
> local metadata format.
>
> What seems to me to be the right thing to do is to have the MODS record
> describe a specific digitized version of the image that the <identifier
> type="uri"> in the MODS record points to. I'd then include a
> <relatedItem> area with a <physicalDescription> referencing the analog
> original. So the relevant parts of a record would look something like
> this:
>
> <!-- DRAFT!!! -->
> <physicalDescription>
>   <internetMediaType>image/jpeg</internetMediaType>
>   <digitalOrigin>reformatted digital</digitalOrigin>
>   <note>Original 35mm slide was digitized in 2003 as a TIFF image.
> Display versions in JPEG format in three sizes are available.</note>
> </physicalDescription>
> <identifier
> type="uri">http://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/archives/cushman/P10010</id
> entifier>
> <relatedItem type="otherFormat">
>   <physicalDescription>
>     <form authority="gmd">graphic</form>
>     <extent>1 slide : col. ; 35mm</extent>
>     <note>Original 35mm slide was digitized in 2003 as a TIFF image.
> Display versions in JPEG format in three sizes are available.</note>
>   </physicalDescription>
> </relatedItem>
>
> But most of the MODS records I see out there (mostly LC records exposed
> via OAI) don't take this approach. They generally have
> <physicalDescription> of the analog item, and contain an <identifier
> type="uri"> pointing to an online digitized version. I'm assuming this
> is because they're being created from source MARC records originally
> created for the analog original, then an 856 field was added when a
> digital version was created. But I could be wrong about that.
>
> So what is everyone else out there doing? If you had infinite time to
> tweak mappings to make MODS records look their "best," how would you
> represent an original analog vs. a digitized item?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Jenn
>
> ========================
> Jenn Riley
> Metadata Librarian
> Digital Library Program
> Indiana University - Bloomington
> Main Library E170
> (812) 856-5759
> www.dlib.indiana.edu
>