Arthur Koestler addressed this issue more generally in his treatment of
knowledge and nature:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janus:_A_Summing_Up

A key point for Koestler was that in complex hierarchical systems, freedom
of action at one level is achieved by restraining actions at levels below
it.

** If we want catalogers to define title relations etc. in a fashion that
best suits -> them, this imposes technical requirements that may chafe
designers (with their *own* notions of freedom of action) in the next
level "down."

** If we want to assert anything about anything we have already asserted
about anything - which is where the concept of Provenance eventually takes
us - it 
would impose additional requirements on application designers who don't
have access to a global mechanism which would not have - until now - seen
much use. Think about auditing functions in an enterprise RDBMS.

Ron Murray


On 7/25/14 12:58 PM, "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>One way to think about this might be to ask whether a transliterations or
>translations are, in fact, separate titles (and therefore deserving of
>recordation as such) or different "views" of a single title.
>
>Personally, I'm not sure I would like for Bibframe to express an opinion
>about this kind of question. It seems to me to lie in the domain of
>cataloging practice and a given decision may require sensitivity to the
>context of the resource being described. For example, at my institution
>we have a wealth of material from the Himalayan region. A Tibetan
>religious manuscript may be named in several forms of Tibetan, several
>forms of Chinese, and other languages as well. The relationships between
>these names can be very complex, including different combinations of
>translation and transliteration and descent as well as arising from
>different sources at different times.
>
>I would like, as much as possible, for Bibframe to leave decisions about
>the possible relationships that obtain between them and how they should
>be expressed in the hands of the expert archivists and catalogers who
>work with this kind of material locally.
>
>---
>A. Soroka
>The University of Virginia Library
>
>On Jul 25, 2014, at 12:25 PM, "Ford, Kevin" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> I'm not sure if you a merely noting general use cases for treating
>>strings as special cases, but we've considered alternate methods to
>>handle transliteration and capturing pronunciation is, I believe, out of
>>scope (or at least it has never been defined as a use case;
>>transliteration, however, will be necessary).  Our thinking about how
>>transliteration might be handled is a separate thread (distinct from the
>>bf:Title topic of this thread, which is the only reason I am being cagey
>>here).
>> 
>> Yours,
>> Kevin
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Bibliographic Framework Transition Initiative Forum
>>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Young,Jeff (OR)
>>> Sent: Friday, July 25, 2014 11:49 AM
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: Re: [BIBFRAME] bf:Title Was: [BIBFRAME] BibFrame and Linked
>>>Data:
>>> Identifiers
>>> 
>>> The specialized need to treat strings as things has precedent in
>>>SKOS-XL
>>> 
>>> http://www.w3.org/TR/skos-reference/skos-xl.html
>>> 
>>> It's a heavyweight mechanism compared to SKOS (Core), but it does allow
>>> the string to be described as such. Some example use cases would be to
>>> attach pronunciations or transliterations.
>>> 
>>> Jeff
>>> 
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: Bibliographic Framework Transition Initiative Forum
>>>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of [log in to unmask]
>>>> Sent: Friday, July 25, 2014 11:29 AM
>>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>>> Subject: [BIBFRAME] bf:Title Was: [BIBFRAME] BibFrame and Linked Data:
>>>> Identifiers
>>>> 
>>>> Having now for the first time taken a close look at bf:Title, I'm a
>>>> bit taken aback. It appears to be a somewhat mechanical rendition of
>>>> MARC
>>>> 245 into some kind of RDF. I agree entirely with Karen Coyle about the
>>>> need for a discussion about indirection generally, but even on the
>>>> assumption that titles are to become entities in their own right (and
>>>> addressed as such), bf:Title seems to me to need much pruning and
>>>> improvement. I've included some specifics below, and would much
>>>> appreciate any response from the Bibframe maintainers.
>>>> 
>>>> 1) http://bibframe.org/vocab/titleValue.html: "Title being addressed."
>>>> 
>>>> What is the purpose of this specialized property in the face of the
>>>> bf:label that is available to all bf:Resources? What would cause
>>>> someone to use it? Is this just MARC 2045$a in a new format?
>>>> 
>>>> 2) http://bibframe.org/vocab/titleQualifier.html: "Qualifier of title
>>>> information to make it unique."
>>>> 
>>>> Working for the uniqueness of labels goes very much against the
>>>> practice of Linked Data. The Title entity is already possessed of an
>>>> identifier. If anything more is needed to ensure uniqueness, isn't
>>>> something badly wrong with the identifier?
>>>> 
>>>> 3) http://bibframe.org/vocab/partNumber.html and
>>>> http://bibframe.org/vocab/partTitle.html
>>>> 
>>>> Is there any purpose to this distinction or is this just a case of
>>>> MARC 245$n and $p being mechanically preserved? In fact these two
>>>> properties have the same range.
>>>> 
>>>> 4) http://bibframe.org/vocab/formDesignation.html: "Class or genre to
>>>> which a Work or Instance belongs."
>>>> and
>>>> http://bibframe.org/vocab/titleAttribute.html: "Other distinguishing
>>>> characteristic of a work, such as version, etc.."
>>>> 
>>>> These seem very strange to me. In what way are these properties of a
>>>> title at all? Is this just a mechanical transfer from MARC 245$k and
>>>> $s? This seems to be information that should be recorded on the Work
>>>> or Instance.
>>>> 
>>>> There are some other oddities to me in bf:Title, and it's not at all
>>>> clear to me that the amount of indirection it requires is healthy in
>>>> itself, but these above are perhaps the most odd and confusing things.
>>>> If we can pare down bf:Title, I suspect it will become more obvious to
>>>> us whether or not a separate title entity is really useful and should
>>>> continue to exist.
>>>> 
>>>> ---
>>>> A. Soroka
>>>> The University of Virginia Library
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Jul 24, 2014, at 4:38 PM, Karen Coyle <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> On 7/24/14, 1:27 PM, Denenberg, Ray wrote:
>>>>>> (I don't think we've thought much about providing identifiers for
>>>> titles.)
>>>>> I hope you *have* because they are in your data ;-)
>>>>> 
>>>>> bf:workTitle
>>>> <http://bibframe.org/resources/Ahx1405278232/1706459title7> ;
>>>>> 
>>>>> <http://bibframe.org/resources/Ahx1405278232/1706459title7>
>>>>> 
>>>>>   bf:titleValue "The adventures of Tom Sawyer" ;
>>>>> 
>>>>>   a bf:Title .
>>>>> 
>>>>> bf:instanceTitle
>>>> <http://bibframe.org/resources/Ahx1405278232/1706459title33>
>>>>> 
>>>>> <http://bibframe.org/resources/Ahx1405278232/1706459title33>
>>>>> 
>>>>>   bf:titleValue "The adventures of Tom Sawyer" ;
>>>>> 
>>>>>   a bf:Title .
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Those are from a BF record, converted from MARC.[1] I found them
>>>> rather odd, myself. It makes some sense to give identifiers to work
>>>> titles, although generally the work title alone does not identify a
>>>> work.  But I think that this is actually evidence for a discussion
>>>> that we have not had yet on the massive level of indirection (blank
>>>> and non- blank nodes) in BIBFRAME.
>>>>> 
>>>>> kc
>>>>> 
>>>>> [1] http://bibframe.org/resources/Ahx1405278232/1706459.rdf
>>>>> 
>>>>> --
>>>>> Karen Coyle
>>>>> [log in to unmask] http://kcoyle.net
>>>>> m: 1-510-435-8234
>>>>> skype: kcoylenet