I'm assuming that the bibliographic item being described is a journal
article; at least, that's where I have encountered book reviews. In that
case, the genre of the item *being described* is a book review, and the
subject of the review would be the book. I understand the convenience of
using related item, but I don't think that is really in keeping with the
meaning of the related item field (which is for bibliographic, not
topical, relationships). In essence, a review in a journal article is
just a short version of a scholarly essay or book about another work.
For those, we use the subject relationship: Melville, Herman, 1819-1891.
Moby Dick -- Criticism.
So it seems that what is needed is a 'review' genre that has this sense
of 'book review' for the resource being described. There could be other
kinds of reviews: reviews of performances, reviews of poetry, reviews of
new journals.... For this reason, it seems that a genre 'review' would
cover the most ground. The MARC genre list has the term 'review' but I
can't find a definition for it (it's 008/24 in books). There are also
'review articles' that cover a broad topic area, and it would be
important not to confuse these two.
Taking this further, as we move toward more of an entity-relationship
model for our data, the relationships between documents need more
attention. I suspect that no one set of relationships will satisfy all
needs. For example, the academic journal world has a particular set of
relationships that aren't found elsewhere, such as responses to the
research of others, replication of research, corrections to data, etc.
Patents also have a unique set of relationships in their listings of
prior art. Music, ah, it's always music that comes up with interesting
cases, like arrangements and setting poems to music, etc. All of these
need to be defined somewhere, but I would not like to see us try to fit
everyone into a 'one size fits all' list. I think that allowing
creativity in the relationships will get us a richer bibliographic universe.
kc
ArjanTh wrote:
> Dear MODS users,
>
> The Dutch scientific institutions – united in Surfshare (the successor of
> DAREnet) – have decided to use MODS in the description of objects in their
> repositories. The main reason to do so is the higher granularity MODS offers
> to its users.
>
> For most type of documents, MODS is providing us with nice examples in the
> “Sample MODS Version 3 XML Documents”, available at:
> http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/mods-guidance.html. Unfortunately, no
> example has been given on how to handle with ‘book reviews’.
>
> Of course, others have pointed out this problem as well (see the discussions
> on the MODS forum). But pointing out the problem will not automatically lead
> to a final solution. In November 2007, Jenn Riley has started the
> discussion on this subjects and Joe Altimus has made good suggestions to
> overcome the problems (as agreed to by Rebecca Guenther).
>
> Meanwhile, workarounds are being developed at several places to create book
> review descriptions in MODS. This is understandable, but we don’t think this
> is a welcome development.
>
> In Europe (the DRIVER project) and more specifically in the Netherlands, we
> need to find a way to handle ‘book reviews’ as soon as possible. The Royal
> Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (the maintainer of the service
> 'NARCIS', www.narcis.info) proposes to introduce the new type value
> "reviewOf" for 'relatedItem'. [ relatedItem type="reviewOf"> ].
>
> This solution is quite similar to the one explained by Joe Altimus in
> November 2007. In Europe it is supported by Benoît Pauwels of the Free
> University of Brussels.
>
> With this new type value "reviewOf" it will be clear to everyone how to
> create book review descriptions in MODS and it will stop the development of
> workarounds. Besides, we think this proposal is rather easy to implement.
>
> Furthermore, it would we helpful when the 'book review' - after the approval
> of this proposal - will be introduced in the “Sample MODS Version 3 XML
> Documents”.
>
> Arjan Hogenaar
>
> --
> Arjan Hogenaar
> Research Information
> Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
> Kloveniersburgwal 29, Amsterdam
> P.O. Box 19121, 1000 GC Amsterdam
> T.: +31 (0)20-4628641
> W: www.knaw.nl
>
>
--
-----------------------------------
Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
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ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
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