“Roles” are relationships.  The role proposal seems implicitly to be scoped to agent relationships, what in RDA terms is Appendix I.  However, there are also relationships among resources, or Appendix J in RDA.  Does the role proposal affect resource relationships?  Or do current BIBFRAME properties such as bf:reproduction stay in place?

Joe Kiegel

From: Bibliographic Framework Transition Initiative Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Denenberg, Ray
Sent: Thursday, August 27, 2015 1:56 PM
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Subject: [BIBFRAME] role proposal

A  few points on the role proposal.

One of the issues is whether we can say :

        bf:agent [bf:identifiedBy  <agent resource> ]

and Thomas Berger points out that “objects of bf:identifiedBy are of class bf:Identifier,” (implication being that bf:identifiedBy has range bf:Identifier)  so you can’t do that. 

However, as I noted in my previous message (Identifier proposal) it is still open to debate  whether bf:identifiedBy is merely a replacement for or generalization of  bf:identifier.  If the latter, then bf:identifiedBy would no longer have range bf:Identifier, and so the above would be allowed.

Along these lines is the question of whether we can further contract the above to (Karen’s example):

   bf:agent   <http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/1234> 

And again it depends on how/whether we define a range for bf:agent.  If we define the range to be class bf:Agent, then no, we cannot.  I think most of us are inclined not to want to restrict the vocabulary in this manner, and to allow such a contraction.

Steven Folsom notes that bf:contributor sounds like it’s an agent, when really it is a combination of a role and agent, and might be better named bf:contribution.   I like that suggestion.

However, it does present one limitation - the proposal does allow for this contraction:

      bf:contributor  <agent resource>

which could be useful when you want to say that an agent is a contributor, without specifying a role.

It would not make sense to say:

      bf:contribution  <agent resource>

because it sounds too much like an agent is a contribution.  However, perhaps we can live with this limitation.

So, changing contributor to contribution and repurposing contributor, we might say:

   bf:contribution

           [  bf:contributor  <agent resource> ;

              bf:role              <role resource> ]

and if no role is to be specified:

bf:contribution

           [  bf:contributor  <agent resource> ]

Ray Denenberg

Library of Congress