Karen,

I think you're right, users usually probably want any manifestation in the same language.  Works are useful, of course, to associate the same things in different languages as having been derived from the same original, but I agree that's probably not what people are (in most cases) looking for.

However, I think when it comes to derivative or related works (movies, adaptations, etc.), the work level is critical.

A typical library user is probably far less interested in the fact that the library holds a copy of 'Emma' in Urdu (except maybe the novelty of it) than they are that the library has a BBC miniseries, or "Clueless", or a copy of "Jane Fairfax: The Secret Story of the Second Heroine in Jane Austen's Emma", etc.

This sort of fits into your notion of Work being too abstract, but that's sort of the level of the relationship between two completely different endeavors.  In some ways the relationship between works is far more relevant than the relationship between expressions.

-Ross.

On May 16, 2013, at 1:40 PM, Karen Coyle <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Laura,

I've often wondered about the library use case for a frbr:Work. (It makes more sense to me in other contexts.) Imagine a user going to a library looking for "War and Peace." In most cases, the person wants the book in a specific language, which may or may not be the original language. In a library serving English language speakers presenting the user with " Война и миръ" probably isn't ideal. Nor would most users want to see all of the different translations, even though that is, under some circumstances, bibliographically relevant.

It seems to me that the frbr:Expression level is closer to the user view than the Work. The Work, to my mind, is so abstract as to be fine as a topic of discussion ("I'd read War and Peace but it's just too long"), but not a "thing" that people seek to use.

kc

On 5/16/13 9:09 AM, Laura Krier wrote:
[log in to unmask]" type="cite"> Is a translation really a different "conceptual essence"? I don't think of a translation as a separate work. But being that BIBFRAME doesn't distinguish between Works and Expressions of a Work (which I think a translation would be), it looks like a translation would have to be considered a different Work. What barriers might that introduce to aggregating resources, or discovering resources?

Laura

--
Laura Krier
Metadata Analyst
California Digital Library

510-987-0832

On May 11, 2013, at 10:24 PM, Shlomo Sanders <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Does the BIBFRAME 'work' include different expressions (as in FRBR) - for example different translations?
Translations may be considered a different "conceptual essence" (albeit a related one) but I haven't been able to find this stated explicitly.    
Eill it be possible to express links between works - e.g different translations?

Thanks,
Shlomo

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-----Original Message-----
From: Bibliographic Framework Transition Initiative Forum [mailto:[email protected]LISTSERV.LOC.GOV] On Behalf Of J. McRee Elrod
Sent: Sunday, May 12, 2013 04:44
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [BIBFRAME] What's an instance?

I tend to think of a Bibframe instance as an edition, but the Bibframe instance seems to be something different, mainly in envisioning more than one instance per edition, but occasionally more than one edition per instance, using ISBN as the determining factor.

Often different bindings of copies of an edition have separate ISBNs, but Bibframe says one instance per ISBN.  Since binding is normally not mentioned in description (using "description" in its usual sense, not to mean abstract or summary), how would these instance descriptions differ from each other for the trade, library, deluxe, paperback bindings?  One could have four Bibframe instances for one
AACR2 or RDA edition.

Often editions are published simultaneously by two or more publishers, but Bibframe says an instance can only have one publisher.  Sometimes these simultaneous publications have both or more publishers given in the resource.  If both or more publishers appear, surely both or more should be included in one instance description, even if each publisher assigns its own ISBN?  Each ISBN describes the same resource; the only
difference is who sells it.   An instance description with one
publisher and one ISBN would not match any existing bibliographic item, each item having more than one.

Occasionally publishers repeat an ISBN in difference editions.  Are these two dr more editions to be one instance?  Which edition would be described?  How does one handle both in the same collection with only one instance description?  Rarely the same ISBN can appear in editions of different works.

ISBN is not a safe litmus for determining editions (instances).

How do yearbooks or multivolume sets, with an ISSN for the serial, an ISBN for the set, but individual ISBNs for the serial and set volumes, fit into this?  (Utlas had 021 for analytical ISBNs of volumes within a serial or set, a feature we still miss.)  While for ebrary, we must create a record for each volume of a mutlivolume set or a serial, because they can have only one 856$url per record, that is not something we would like to do for all.  It would clutter up catalogues.  BTW, can an instance record have multiple PDF URLs?

If these volumes with their own ISBNs are separate instances, are each instances of a separate work, or are all volumes instances of a single set or serial work?  Instance records for these volumes would seem to have more in common with MARC item records, than AACR2/RDA MARC manifestation records.

The Bibframe provisions seem to me not to accord with messy bibliographic reality.


  __       __   J. McRee (Mac) Elrod ([log in to unmask])
 {__  |   /     Special Libraries Cataloguing   HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
 ___} |__ \__________________________________________________________


-- 
Karen Coyle
[log in to unmask] http://kcoyle.net
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