Hi,
the question about filing indicators is an interesting question also for
software engineering.
I assume Bibframe, as a successor of all the MARC format families,
should be able to carry library catalog data of many bibliographic rules
(for example, data from german cataloging and from german
filing/ordering rules). Such a semantic layer over Bibframe data is
important because it is separate from the original "raw" data.
Filing/sorting rules are also dependent on the language and localization
environments of the cataloging rules. And, what is often ignored, they
change over time.
Speaking from the viewpoint of a software engineer, sooner or later in
the need to serve Bibframe data to the user in a consistent manner,
filing/sorting rules do always cover a collection-wide scope of
documents, not only a single document. In other words, there is a
document context, which fits perfectly to Linked Data. In MARC, there
were only records, with a static, context-free model how to control the
data in the record. Librarians worked around this limitation by adding
variant text fields to original data text fields, using helper
characters to express sorting/filing rules. This procedure is
unfortunately from the age of punchcards and should be reconsidered
carefully for the Linked Data environment.
The old procedure is not a preferable solution for Bibframe because
- the filing/sorting variants should no longer be required for being
entered manually in a repetitive fashion, they should no longer be
erroneous or incomplete
- not every Bibframe package will come with all the variant texts needed
for filing/sorting a document collection, raising the question what is
taking precedence in case of conflicting or missing variants
- not every sorting/filing rule of all international contexts can be
included, and if it could, there must be a method to distinguish between
them all. It's also raising the question how Bibframe data should be
merged when there are different filing/ordering rules for the same text.
- and, maybe most important, there are other mechanisms for expressing
filing/sorting rules that software engineers have invented since when
filing/sorting indicators for MARC have been introduced ;-)
I would like to extend the statements made in "Assessment of Options for
Handling Full Unicode in Character Encodings in MARC 21"
http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2005/2005-report01.pdf
For example, there is a suggestion "The bibliographic community needs to
examine the Unicode components of normalization and collation and
consider whether they can be adopted across scripts."
In contrast to the "Assessment of Options for Handling Full Unicode in
Character Encodings in MARC 21" where the functions "Indexing/Searching,
Sorting, Record matching" (p. 7) are subsumed and assigned to the
reponsibility of an individual institution, I think Bibframe should
define at least a common sense of how to embrace Unicode sorting rules.
My suggestions in the context of Bibframe are:
- Bibframe should enable codes for filing/sorting rules. The Unicode
consortium has made great efforts on dealing with a plethora of
collation rules (either by collation keys or by rule based collations).
See also http://cldr.unicode.org/ and
http://cldr.unicode.org/index/cldr-spec/collation-guidelines for how to
generate new collation rules.
- Bibframe should provide links to the collation rule information from
the text the cataloger wants to describe. It does not help much to add
language information, sorting/nonsorting variants and other localization
information at other places in the bibliographic description. For
example, in RDF, literals can be encoded with a language tag, directly
attached to the text. For Bibframe, special library catalog rule context
tags could be appropriate, if language tags are not.
- Bibframe should add internationalization also to filing/sorting rules
- Bibframe should oblige to apply a default Unicode-based procedure to
filing/sorting texts if there is missing or conflicting information
about internationalization
- computer systems that export/import Bibframe data should be able to
apply filing/sorting rules automatically, recognizing the source and the
target environment of the Bibframe transport
The results of the Unicode consortium are also immediately available for
software programming languages, thanks to projects like ICU
http://site.icu-project.org/
For example, there is a Unicode Collation Algorithm (UCA) that could be
applied to combined bibliographic data originating from many
international sources. Or, if that's not sufficient, another
Unicode-based collation algorithm could be developed for Bibframe.
Just as there are authority data sources for controlled vocabulary in
library catalogs, there should be freely available authoritative
resources for the filing/sorting rules that should apply to Bibframe
texts in locally defined contexts and environments. My hope is, in the
near future, library catalog users and software engineers, who are used
to applications that use Unicode, will no longer get frustrated about
library catalog data and the many methods of expressing filing/sorting.
Best regards,
Jörg
Am 11.02.13 02:36, schrieb J. McRee Elrod:
> I've noticed no discussion on Bibframe of filing indicators, nor
> indication of such in posted examples. Did I miss it?
>
> There was a recent discussion on another list of titles which should
> file under what appears to be an initial article, e.g, "A is for ...".
>
> How will this be handled in Bibframe? Initial articles differ between
> languages, as well as "A", "An" and "The" being occasionally the word
> by which to file. Programming to recognize this would be very
> complex. I have seen no discussion concerning indication of language
> in Bibframe, on which to base such programming.
>
> Are we to no longer have alphabetical browse lists, only web style
> searching? I would miss alphabetical browse lists apart from subject
> searches, which I prefer to have in inverse chronological order. That
> too would be more difficult to program based on imprint date in the
> absence of a date fixed field. The imprint date may even be lacking,
> if that CONSER provision is carried over.
>
>
> __ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod ([log in to unmask])
> {__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
> ___} |__ \__________________________________________________________
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