More interesting work at National Library of Australia
Kent Fitch of the National Library of Australia dropped me some e-mail about a very interesting project he’s doing: Searching Bibliographic Records, a test of using Lucene, the free search engine. Some FRBRizing is done, so you’ll want to go have a look.
They say on the home page:
The current Libraries Australia database contains many “duplicates”: records not merged due to subtle differences in metadata which are often inconsequential or errors. Many people also think it would be a good idea to combine various editions of works in the search results interface, although how far this combining should go is debatable. Should it be the equivalent of an FRBR work, or of an FRBR expression? Should it include works across languages and material types?
… What we’re trying to achieve is a set of groupings most likely to be useful to a searcher wanting to find a resource. The searcher probably has very strong preferences for the form and language of the resource they’re seeking, which is why they’re our top two layers/groupings. After that, they may have a preference for a particular edition or, less likely but possibly, even a particular manifestation (publisher, publication year, place of publication).
Of course, they don’t actually care about the bibliographic record; they want to get there hands on the resource, so we have to think about how they can easily tell the system to:
- Locate any edition I can get today for free
- Locate any edition published after 1960 I can get today for free
- Locate either of these two editions I can get cheapest and soonest
- Locate any French edition available for electronic access…
Whenever I think of Australian literature I think of Sean McMullen, whose great novel Souls in the Great Machine is set a thousand years in the future, in an Australia where electricity cannot be used and librarians settle fights with shotgun duels. That link will take you to the basic display of the book, but notice the “This title can be viewed as part of an experimental FRBR group” link. That takes you here: FRBRized view of Souls in the Great Machine.
A better example is the FRBRized view of Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling, which has lots of translations and is much juicier FRBRarily but, certainly, less Australian.
Go have a look youself: poke around, try a search, see what results they show. Kent Fitch is interested in hearing your comments.