I would welcome some clarity about what the relatedToWork property means in Example 3 (section 2.3. Bad data). My understanding is that a BIBFRAME Authority would, if the Direct option were eschewed, stand in
for an authority record as at least a local bridge between a work and published linked data schemes. As such, I imagine one BIBFRAME Authority id (or record if you will) to be associated with one person or entity. However using a relationToWork property within
the BIBFRAME Authority suggests to me either that each BIBFRAME Work would require a separate BIBFRAME Authority or that each Person would require a separate BIBFRAME Authority for each role they perform (e.g. composer, librettist, first violin, supposed compeser).
I imagined instead the BIBFRAME Authority being an aggregation of data about the person or entity with the relationship being expressed between the Work/Instance and the Authority. If anything, shouldn’t the
complexity be shifted to the Work/Instance instead? Off the top of my head:
bf:1234 a bf:Work .
bf:1234 bf:label “Requiem” .
bf:1234 bf:composer bf:9999 .
bf:9999 a bf:Authority .
bf:9999 bf:label “Mozart” .
In the above case, bf:9999 could be reused thousands of times for Mozart and still be applicable, the relationship changing if he happened to be the librettist instead (or as well). I understand this does get
more complicated with the unreliable examples of $e and any option I play with involving blank nodes ends up looking not unlike a BIBFRAME Authority. For human-readable data though, especially that based on AACR2/RDA records, the statement of responsibility
and notes often provide the relationship information even if it were stripped or simplified from the old $e:
bf:1234 a bf:Work .
bf:1234 bf:label “Requiem” .
bf:1234 bf:creator bf:9998 .
bf:1234 bf:generalNote “Supposedly composed by Salieri. But was it?!?” .
bf:9998 a bf:Authority .
bf:9998 bf:label “Salieri” .
Similarly, I don’t see why “K.G. Saur” is in the BIBFRAME Authority for the publisher in Example 4 (section 2.6). If it’s a version of the name for authority purposes, then that’s fine. If it’s meant to be a
transcription of what it says on the Instance, then shouldn’t it be in with the Instance data? Example 5 uses this latter kind of approach, which could be supplemented by a link to a BIBFRAME Authority.
I hope this makes sense and I haven’t totally misunderstood the whole thing.
While I am here I would also like to say, as I have remarked to Kevin Ford in Another Place, how much I applaud the openness of the BIBFRAME exercise so far.
Many thanks,
Tom
---
Thomas Meehan
Head of Current Cataloguing
Library Services
University College London
Gower Street
London WC1E 6BT