On September 18, 2014, at 7:28 Karen wrote:

> On 9/18/14, 2:06 AM, Robert Sanderson wrote:
> > Is it as simple as Work bf:hasPart/bf:isPartOf Work and Instance
> > bf:hasPart/bf:isPartOf Instance ?
> > And then associate the absorbed/continued/superceded and language
> > relationships with the Work-that-is-the-Part?
>
> It could be, but we may be getting into a rather complex area in terms
> of relationships and the bibliographic world. A given library is a
> subset of some larger bibliographic world of which it does not have
> perfect knowledge. Let's take my local public library that has a few
> copies of War and Peace, none of which are in Russian. The library also
> does not have either catalogers nor patrons who would be able to read
> the bibliographic information in the original Russian language. Although
> the English-language translation *should* indicate that it is a
> translation of the original, linking to the original 1) may not be
> helpful to the library's users 2) is probably not a good use of the
> cataloger's time. So a note that says "Translated from the Russian"
> could be more helpful, and is undoubtedly easier on the cataloger, than
> the creation of a relationship to a separate resource (that, btw, the
> library does not hold).

I see two different things here:

One is cataloguing practice: In an ideal world the cataloguer of your local library shouldn't catalogue the local copy at all but re-use information from somewhere else, e. g. by creating a holding and link that to the appropriate bf:Instance (or rda:Manifestation or whatever...) _which might or might not be part of the local library's database_. I'm totally aware that this requires large changes in library infrastructure and that we're definitely not there yet, but that would be true data re-use...

The second thing is how we build a user display. The information displayed to the user can depend on the context (of the library and of the user). A display in a small public library can take most information from the bf:Instance, look at the bf:Work and figure out that there is a link to the Russian original and create the text "translated from the Russian" from that information. I see no need for the cataloguer to create an extra note.

> The work done around bibliographic relationships, from Tillett's
> dissertation through FRBR, RDA, and now BIBFRAME, does not distinguish
> between the whole bibliographic universe and the needs of the local
> library collection. (I also believe that much of this work was done with
> only large libraries in mind.) It may not make sense for a library to
> have resources in its catalog that it does not hold, but that have
> bibliographic relationships with ones in its collection. Until we have a
> way that each individual catalog can move users easily from its
> collection to the larger (and perhaps theoretical rather than
> inventory-based) bibliographic world, this conflict remains.

Yes, but we should definitely continue to work with the vision of a "theoretical" bibliographic universe that does not differentiate between local and global data (except for Holdings/Items) in mind and not constrain ourselves to the current library infrastructure.

Best,

Lars
>
> The work done around bibliographic relationships, from Tillett's
> dissertation through FRBR, RDA, and now BIBFRAME, does not distinguish
> between the whole bibliographic universe and the needs of the local
> library collection. (I also believe that much of this work was done with
> only large libraries in mind.) It may not make sense for a library to
> have resources in its catalog that it does not hold, but that have
> bibliographic relationships with ones in its collection. Until we have a
> way that each individual catalog can move users easily from its
> collection to the larger (and perhaps theoretical rather than
> inventory-based) bibliographic world, this conflict remains.
>
> kc
>
> --
> Karen Coyle
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