From: "Karen Coyle" <[log in to unmask]>
> Since CQL doesn't correspond to particular fields (which I must say
> strikes me as being abstract to the point of non-utility, but oh well),

Perhaps I overstated the "abstractness".

There is the Z39.50 bib-1 search point 'title' - it's supposed to correspond
to whatever you consider a title to be for records in a particular
database -- and if it happens to be a MARC database it is supposed to
correspond to marc fields 130, 21X-24X, 440, 490, 730, 740, 830, 840,
subfield $t; 400, 410, 410, 600,610, 611, 700, 710,711, 800, 810, 811.

So 'title' is quite concretely defined, if MARC is your *reference* format.
The *abstractness* comes into play because we want the search point to be
useful whether it's MARC records or not. So the definition is extended to
say (in effect) for "non-MARC records, 'title' corresponds to whatever you
think a title is, and for reference, here is what it is for MARC."

So we're trying to do come up with search points corresponding to MODS, that
is, where MODS is the reference format, analogous to MARC for bib-1.


> is there any reason why you couldn't produce search points for things
like:
>
> keyword
> name
> subject

We absolutely can define these search points. It takes some work. And it
might be beyond the scope of MODS. Or it might not. Or part of it might and
part not.

Take 'name' for example. If you want to define a CQL search point 'name'
you first want to decide what the scope is. Let's say we use MODS as a
reference format in making that decision. Do you want to define a 'name'
search point such that if you search on 'name' you'll be searching all of
the following:

name -personal
name corporate
name - conference
name - part
name - affiliation
name - role

Or is it really a different set that you'd have in mind? (Rhetorical
question.)

And the same question for 'subject'.

For 'keyword' I'd be hard-pressed to make any correspondence to MODS. That
doesn't at all mean that CQL shouldn't define a 'keyword' search point, it
just means that it would fit somewhere else in the search architecture.

--Ray