I'm the cataloger Tim mentioned who observed that RDA is "way too string-y" and mentioned co-evolution of content standards and data models. Provider/264 represents a clear scenario. Transcription as in RDA is a relative latecomer. Earlier cataoging rules provided for all kinds of brief forms, or none at all when the publisher was also the main entry. In spirit, the earlier rules were pretty much using a "preferred form" of the publisher's name. There was no evidence that users were impeded in their understanding of the data they found on catalog cards or in MARC records with such content.
The chief purpose of our descriptive data is to connect users with resources. Providing a stylized picture of sources of information isn't really important with regard to publication (etc.). In my view Find, Identify, and Select would be perfectly well served by forgetting about transcription altogether and relying on cataloger-formulated representation of entities. Concern about documenting usage or providing an exact version of source data can be handled in other ways, if necessary.
By the way, I mean this to apply to early printed resources as well. The current string "Printed and sold by William Darton, Jun., 58, Holborn Hill" would be replaced with the URI and predicate representing what is now 700 Darton, William, 1781-1854, publisher. The address would be 371a in the "authority record."
--Don
Donald R. Thornbury
Head, Technical Services for Special Collections
Department of Rare Books and Special Collections
Princeton University Library
One Washington Road
Princeton, NJ 08544-2098
Office: 609.258.0874
Fax: 609.258.2324
-----Original Message-----
From: Bibliographic Framework Transition Initiative Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ford, Kevin
Sent: Friday, August 01, 2014 10:33 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [BIBFRAME] Proposal to handle "Providers" differently
Comments in-line.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bibliographic Framework Transition Initiative Forum
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Joseph Montibello
> Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2014 8:43 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [BIBFRAME] Proposal to handle "Providers" differently
>
> Hi,
>
> Not a cataloger here, but this is an interesting conversation. I just
> want to call one piece out:
>
> > ...help a user match that which he/she may hold with what is seen in
> > the record
>
>
> While I know that's the reason for the current practice, that's not a
> compelling reason to insist that bibframe (or any future system) must
> do also support that use case.
The actual use case is "support RDA cataloging." The transcription aspect, which pertains to the above, is a byproduct of meeting that use case.
>
> > ...it would no longer match what is on the manifestation.
>
> Are we trading the certainty of matching this string against the
> (assumed) physical item:
> >>>>> Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1955.
>
> vs. a different sort of certainty that might be found in linked data like this:
> publishedAt: http://dbpedia.org/page/Chicago
> publishedBy: http://fr.dbpedia.org/page/University_of_chicago_press
> publishedIn: http://dbpedia.org/page/1955
>
> If we have to give up one of these, I'd vote for ditching the old
> practice of matching item in hand to get the benefits of linked data.
The proposal is actually to accommodate /both/ of those. The publicationStatement would allow a cataloger to record the information "as found on the source" while the other properties would provide a more structured, linky approach.
All the best,
Kevin
>
> Just my {valueOfOpinion:http://dbpedia.org/page/Two-
> cent_piece_%28United_States_coin%29}.
> Joe Montibello, MLIS
> Library Systems Manager
> Dartmouth College
> 603.646.9394
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
>
> On Jul 31, 2014, at 6:06 PM, Ford, Kevin <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > Comments in-line.
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Bibliographic Framework Transition Initiative Forum
> >> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Robert Sanderson
> >> Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2014 5:30 PM
> >> To: [log in to unmask]
> >> Subject: Re: [BIBFRAME] Proposal to handle "Providers" differently
> >>
> >>
> >> +1 to standardizing the representation of place, using identifiers.
> >> +(I'm sure that's no surprise to any one)
> >>
> >> I'm less in favor of publisherStatement to transcribe and then
> >> repeat the same information in somewhat of a jumbled fashion with
> >> repeating publishedAt/By/On. If there's the possibility of
> >> multiples, as demonstrated, then the information shouldn't get lost
> >> as to which place is associated with which organization, IMO.
> >
> > I'm not a fan of the repetition either, but RDA often requires
> /transcription/ with all the pitfalls that might entail (misspellings,
> non- standard abbreviations, non-standard spellings) and so I worry
> about the need to record those details "as they appear on the source of information"
> and the impact that would have trying to standardize on bf:Organizations and
> bf:Places. Functionally, the transcription serves to help a user match that
> which he/she may hold with what is seen in the record, which is why
> standardizing abbreviations (Chicago, Ill. becomes Chicago, IL
> perhaps), for example, can be a problem, since it would no longer
> match what is on the manifestation.
> >
> > I also have fantasies that - down the road apiece - a cataloger
> > would be
> able to type in a publicationStatement into a text field, at which
> point background programming would perform some kind of entity
> recognition and populate the proposed fields without the cataloger
> having to do double the work. That doesn't get around the inherent
> duplication of data, but it mitigates the effort that produced it.
> >
> >>
> >> Here the structure isn't imposed just for the sake of having
> >> structure, it's to model the publication event and its participants.
> >> The W3C PROV-O equivalent would be:
> >>
> >> _:instance1 a bf:Instance, prov:Entity ;
> >> prov:wasGeneratedBy [ _:publicationEvent a prov:Activity,
> >> bf:PublicationActivity ;
> >> prov:used [ _:work1 a bf:Work ] ; // maybe?
> >> prov:wasAssociatedWith [ _:ucp a bf:Organization ; ...] ;
> >> prov:wasAssociatedWith [ _:gv a bf:Organization ; ... ] ;
> >> prov:startedAtTime "1955" ;
> >> ]
> >> ]
> >>
> >
> > This seems complicated (more so, in fact) and returns us, more or
> > less, back
> to where it is now, which is to say a mostly non-reusable resource.
> Also, those two wasAssociatedWiths would have to remain in the order
> in which they appeared on the source. You can appreciate the headache
> that introduces in RDF-land.
> >
> > I liked your earlier question to Karen about what it all meant. Are
> > the
> publishers (in two different locations) working together to produce
> the /same thing/ or are we looking at two manifestations, each
> published by one of the indicated publishers in that particular year.
> The latter would make things a lot easier, as you noted, and it is how
> we've interpreted that construct, but the documentation is vague on this point.
> >
> > Warmly,
> > Kevin
> >
> >
> >>
> >> Rob
> >>
> >>
> >> On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 2:04 PM, Ford, Kevin <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >> Agreed.
> >>
> >> The transcription element aside, which would be contained within
> >> the publisherStatement, I would expect a value vocabulary be used,
> >> and therefore an identifier be used, when recording the place of
> >> publication /as data/. In that case, the identifier would be
> >> specific to Paris, France versus Paris, Texas.
> >>
> >> Yours,
> >> Kevin
> >>
> >>
> >>> -----Original Message-----
> >>> From: Bibliographic Framework Transition Initiative Forum
> >>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of [log in to unmask]
> >>> Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2014 4:49 PM
> >>> To: [log in to unmask]
> >>> Subject: Re: [BIBFRAME] Proposal to handle "Providers" differently
> >>>
> >>> This seems to me to be a really excellent opportunity to take
> >>> advantage of the opportunity presented by Linked Data. We could
> >>> translate: "Paris [France]" to http://dbpedia.org/data/Paris or
> >>> some other specific choice, or "Chicago [Illinois]" to
> >>> http://sws.geonames.org/4887398 or some other specific choice...
> >>> we could use identifiers for a task for which they are very well suited:
> >> disambiguation.
> >>>
> >>> ---
> >>> A. Soroka
> >>> The University of Virginia Library
> >>>
> >>> On Jul 31, 2014, at 4:09 PM, "J. McRee Elrod" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Karen posted:
> >>>>
> >>>>> e.g. Paris : Gauthier-Villars; Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1955.
> >>>>
> >>>> As I keep saying, our European and/or Asian clients would want
> >>>> [France] after Paris, and [Illinois] after Chicago. Our North
> >>>> American cleints want jurisdction for some cities for which
> >>>> Australian and DLC records lack jurisdiction. A city known in
> >>>> Canberra or the Beltway may not be known in Canada. Isn't it
> >>>> time, since we are no longer limited by what we can get on a
> >>>> card, to leave our
> >> Anglo silo?
> >>>>
> >>>> It seems to me, the move to Bibframe would be a time to
> >>>> standardize representation of place.
> >>>>
> >>>> As was said in the early days of automation, "garbage in, garbage
> >>>> out". Isn't it time we were more consistent in what we are
> >>>> coding, as opposed to feeding in truncated unit card type data?
> >>>>
> >>>> In Bibframe, the labels are sometimes longer than the data being
> >>>> coded!
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> __ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod ([log in to unmask])
> >>>> {__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing
> >>>> HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
> >>>> ___} |__
> >>>
> >>
> \__________________________________________________________
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Rob Sanderson
> >> Technology Collaboration Facilitator Digital Library Systems and
> >> Services Stanford, CA 94305
|