Hi Rebecca, thanks for the reply, I appreciate your help. On 11-Apr-07 at 15:48 -0400 Rebecca S. Guenther wrote: > Thank you for this feedback. Part of the problem in having > "suggested values" instead of an enumerated list, of course, is > inconsistency. People can use anything they want, but you are > right, there is benefit in using a controlled list for > interoperability purposes. Having simply "suggested values" (instead of a fixed enumerated list) for detail @type and extent @unit is fine, though it would greatly help if the online documentation would make a consistent recommendation on best practices. A clear recommendation for common unit names would help implementers to maintain interoperability. Thanks for considering this. > Our intent at the time (as I recall and as I find in some early > documentation) was to have the type attribute under detail in the > singular and the unit attribute as plural. Rationale is that the > detail is a generic "type" and unit is under extent, which usually > has a start and an end-- that suggests the plural. This makes sense to me. However, personally, I'd prefer the simpler approach to always use exactly the same word to describe a particular type/unit, i.e. always use either plural or singular. > As to the example that you mention with detail type=page number > and extent that has a start and no end, we need to fix that. I > don't think the type=page number makes sense, although we did use > a real example at the time. What you use in <part> depends on how > your document is structured. > > Originally <part> was included in MODS to be able to give a parsed > citation and it was only available under relatedItem with > type="host". In that case you would specify the volume and issue > that the article appeared in under <detail> (using <number>, > <caption>, etc.). We later included <part> at the MODS level to > enable the description of parts of a whole. In the case of a > single page, I would recommend using extent with the start and end > (as the schema specifies, we would repeat the single page number > in <end>). Thanks for the clarification. > If others have used <part> differently, please let us know. Bibutils and refbase currently use for single-page items (such as journal articles or book chapters, under 'relatedItem type="host"'): <part> ... <detail type="page"> <number>37</number> </detail> </part> and for multi-page items: <part> ... <extent unit="page"> <start>37</start> <end>47</end> </extent> </part> Here are four sample MODS records as exported by refbase that demonstrate cases for single page, multiple pages, and total pages: <http://demo.refbase.net/show.php?records=3,6,7,12&submit=Export&exportFormat=MODS%20XML&exportType=file> But if I understand your suggestions correctly, the recommended way would be for single-page items: <part> ... <extent unit="pages"> <start>37</start> <end>37</end> </extent> </part> and for multi-page items: <part> ... <extent unit="pages"> <start>37</start> <end>47</end> </extent> </part> Please correct me if I'm wrong. > We will correct the documentation. Thank you for bringing this to > our attention. Thanks for considering any improvements to the documentation. Regards, Matthias __________________________________________ Matthias Steffens ---- www.refbase.net