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On Oct 30, 2004, at 1:03 PM, Karen Coyle wrote:

> On Sat, 2004-10-30 at 09:51, Andrew E Switala wrote:
>> In keeping the metadata close to the citation, as with unparsed lists
>> of
>> authors and part information, wouldn't we lose the ability to
>> transform
>> the data?  Consider, e.g., a list of four authors + et al. in the XML
>> record, when the desired output style requires three authors + et al.
>> Or
>> unparsed part information like "4(3 suppl 2)" when the output style
>> requires volume numbers, but not issue numbers, to appear in boldface.
>> The elements will ultimately have to be parsed; although the original
>> citation could be preserved in <recordOrigin>.
>
> There's a difference between allowing the data to be kept at a highly
> granular level and REQUIRING that the data be kept that way. I think
> that should depend on the application and the purposes of the metadata.

But Andy's right here.  Citation styles vary tremendously, and if you
don't correctly encode the data, it's impossible to format them
accurately across output styles.  The more you require proper data, the
more reliable/portable it becomes.  In fact, this is my biggest
complaint about MODS; it's too loose.

>> A question with respect to the et al. issue: If all you had were a
>> secondary source with a partial list of authors, and no access to the
>> primary source, what would be the best way to encode that in MODS?
>> Maybe link to a "special" record in the name authority file for "et
>> al."?  I haven't found myself in that position yet, but it's bound to
>> happen someday.
>
> There isn't any coding that I know of for et al, because it only makes
> sense when you have a list of authors, not individual authors.

Yes, this doesn't belong in the metadata.  Every output style has
different rules.  I'd go through the trouble of tacking down the full
author list if it wasn't listed probably.

I've not formally announced it yet, but I've been working on a
comprehensive XML/XSLT-based solution to bibliographic and citation
formatting.  I've not implemented et al handling yet, but it will
involve a parameter, beyond which the handling gets switched in.

        http://www.users.muohio.edu/darcusb/files/xbiblio.tar.gz

Bruce