Hi all-

Where would one put information about the instrumentation intended for a
musical work in a MODS record? For a MODS implementation we're
developing, we'd like to have a place to put this information that would
allow us to use it to provide searching and browsing on named
instruments and ensembles. Please ignore for the time being any
complications arising from the assumption that musical works are
intended for a specified instrumentation. :-)

This information is scattered about in several places in the MARC
record:

- 048: Coded instrumentation values. This field doesn't appear in the
MARC->MODS mapping at
<http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-mapping.html>.
- 240 |m: Medium of performance, part of Uniform Title. Slightly less
controlled than values in 048. This would be used in MODS as part of a
uniform title string, which wouldn't be structured enough for our
purposes.
- 650: Subject. Would map to a MODS <subject> element. (And probably
<topic> within that, although whether the instrumentation of a work is
its "topic" is debatable.) Again, this solution would not be structured
enough for our purposes, not least because wouldn't know which <subject>
elements reflect instrumentation and which reflect something else. 

None of the places this information appears in a MARC record maps to
somewhere in MODs that would be useful for our purposes. It appears that
in the MODS records for sheet music that LC exposes via OAI (e.g.,
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/oai2_0?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=mods&
identifier=oai%3Alcoa1.loc.gov%3Aloc.music%2Fsm1820.010020>), this
information is only included as a topical subject heading. We'd again
like to be able to record it in a more structured form.

Is there a better place for instrumentation data in MODS than creating
an <instrument> element or some such under <extension>?

Thanks,

Jenn

========================
Jenn Riley
Metadata Librarian
Digital Library Program
Indiana University - Bloomington
Wells Library E170
(812) 856-5759
www.dlib.indiana.edu

Inquiring Librarian blog: www.inquiringlibrarian.blogspot.com