Cain: FRBR is a set of leaky containers
Diane Hillmann, a major figure in the Dublin Core and metadata world (she wrote Using Dublin Core, for example) is on the RDA-L mailing list, and sent some very interesting mail there on 6 February 2006. I can’t point to archives yet, so I’ll give a couple of extended quotes and replies. In one part of her mail, she said:
Transcription as Identification
In the world of traditional cataloging and static published resources, the notion of consistent transcription as an important method to assure predictable access, from a variety of agencies handling exactly the same resources, made a great deal of sense.
However, digital resources carry no such assumption of stability-change is part of the package. In that environment, relying on use of consistently transcribed information as the primary method of identifying a resource makes much less sense. Resources in this environment are most often unique, and usually identified by a numeric or alpha-numeric string. In traditional cataloging, such identifiers are also used, of course: ISSNs and ISBNs are the most obvious examples, but they are generally not the primary identification of the resource.
Hal Cain of the Joint Theological Library in Australia replied two days later, and said to this:
The latest issue of LRTS has just arrived, here in the Antipodes, and I find Ed Jones’s article on FRBR constructs in relation to the realities of serials (er, continuing resources) extremely enlightening.
Jones invites us to consider whether stability or change in the *name* of a resource is the most appropriate way of determining whether it’s the *same* resource (to be described in a single record accomodating the changes) or, as under AACR2 following Paris Principles, a change in name must be taken to denote a different, separately described, resource. Though Jones does not address the question of change of title meaning a change of name in successive editions of a monographic resource, I wonder about the maintenance of AACR2 25.B, which in effect demands that revisions issued under a different title be treated as separate, related works. Is such complexity supportable in the limited environment of an online catalogue display and linking mechanisms?
Further on in her e-mail, Hillmann said:
Reproductions
I brought up the issue of reproductions on the RDA-L list and was dismayed to see how many catalogers were still trying to make the case for describing an original and a reproduction on the same record. If FRBR is truly underlying RDA, I believe this bullet must be bitten firmly and these practices explicitly marginalized within the context of the rules. In an environment where metadata of different formats created using different rules (or no rules) must be shareable, these residual practices keep us all from benefiting from our common enterprise.
Yes, it is certainly true that most vendor systems do not display multiply versioned resources acceptably, but we undercut the usefulness of our data by manipulating it to overcome system inadequacies; rather, we should address those problems with our vendors.
Cain replied to the first paragraph:
Yes, yes! But FRBR is a set of leaky containers: to make its application in RDA watertight, we have to make decisions, and *apply* those decisions *consistently*: how do we distinguish between “work” and “expression”; is cataloguing to be based *absolutely* on description, access, relating and controlling the *manifestation* — and does *item* really correspond with a user’s (temporary) on-screen display of a resource from a remote server which is a mirror of a “parent” resource, the attributes of which are affected by the platform (hardware and software, e.g. which browser) used and by the extent of access permitted; and– So far I don’t think we’ve agreed about the shape of the containers; Ed Jones in his recent LRTS article on continuing resources in relation to FRBR makes it clear how much has yet to be settled, maybe redesigned.
“FRBR is a set of leaky containers” — Hal Cain, 2006. A memorable quote.