Bruce D'Arcus wrote:

>
>
> Order in this sense is representing a hierarchy level?

Yes. Journals have serial parts, many of which are hierarchical. (The
complicating ones are things like yearly indexes or multi-year indexes,
supplements, etc. Some of those break the hierarchy of the main journal
run.)

>Actually, if I understand you right, no. What appears on the cover is
>sort of irrelevant to how it is formatted in any given citation.
>
>
Bruce, you are starting from a formatted citation -- so someone has
already made choices. Some people may be starting with the hard copy, so
metadata needs to take that into account. Librarians are nearly always
working from the hard copy, and their job is to describe the sequence of
parts of a journal unambiguously. There are no "citation styles" in
play. So your application is not everyone's application, which is why we
need both flexibility and a way to satisfy this range of needs.

>Likewise, if I cite a German language journal article in an English
>text, the citation uses the standards of the English language citation
>style. E.g. what on the original journal would be one word (my German
>is terrible, so I don't remember what it'd be!) would in the Eingliish
>citation be another.
>
>
And if your metadata is being used by someone in Germany? We also need
to internationalize our metadata -- it will be used outside of the US,
as both MARC and MODS are. We aren't just trying to solve the problem of
English language citations.

>
>Right, except my argument would be order is not relevant per se, and
>actually confuses the issue (um, no pun intended). If the "part"
>above is a different kind of part than is used in other contexts, then
>they should just have different names.
>
>
Order matters in systems that will link an article citation in one
system with the same article in another, such as databases of full text.
The convention is to cite the parts in hierarchical order for that
linking; captions are generally not retained nor are they relevant. So
if one journal has part and then number, and another has number and then
part, that order will make a difference in terms of linking between
systems.

Bruce, you have a very specific application, but yours is only a subset
of the many uses of journal article metadata. I believe that my proposed
data elements will allow your application to work, and will also serve
applications in other environments. We are working on a big picture
here, bigger, at least, than your application. When others claim to have
specific needs, we have to try to accommodate them all. I think we are
working in that direction, trying to move beyond just serving library
systems. But the solution has to be broad, not narrow.

kc

--
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Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
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ph.: 510-540-7596
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
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