Delsey, CONSER and RDA
Two days ago Tom Delsey gave this to the Joint Steering Committee for the Revision of AACR: Analysis of the Proposed CONSER Standard Record vis à vis RDA, CONSER being the Cooperative Online Serials Program. It says, “The following is an analysis of recommendations on cataloguing rules, rule interpretations, and practices set out in appendix M of the Access Level Record for Serials Working Group’s final report as they relate to the development of RDA.
There’s one paragraph about FRBR in Delsey’s report, and I’ll quote it all here.
More importantly, however, the relationships that will be defined in RDA (based on the FRBR model and the relationship types defined by Tillett) treat translations and language editions as modifications of a work. RDA will therefore provide instructions on reflecting the primary relationship between a translation or language edition and the related work (i.e., the work realized by that translation or language edition) by means of an identifier, a name (i.e., a controlled access point), or a description representing the related work. Following the FRBR model, RDA will also provide instructions on reflecting, if necessary, the relationship between a translation or language edition and a related expression (i.e., the specific language version used as the basis for that translation or language edition) by means of an identifier, a name (i.e., a controlled access point), or a description representing the related expression. But RDA will not provide instructions on reflecting the relationship between a translation or language edition and another manifestation (i.e., a manifestation embodying the original language expression of the work). That is because both the FRBR model and the relationship types defined by Tillett categorize translations and language editions as expressions of a work, and therefore define a relationship involving a translation or language edition as either a primary relationship between an expression and the work realized by the expression or as an expression-to-expression relationship, but not as an expression-to-manifestation relationship. If the intent of the CONSER recommendation is to allow the construction of an added entry using the title proper of the original manifestation rather than a uniform title for the work embodied in that manifestation, introducing instructions in RDA to support the recommendation would effectively require defining a new relationship type(s) to cover the relationship between a resource embodying a translation or language edition and a related manifestation embodying another language version of the same work (i.e., a relationship that would function as an expression-to-manifestation relationship). Defining such a relationship would seriously compromise the alignment of RDA both with the FRBR model and with the relationship types defined by Tillett.
(Seen on the AUTOCAT mailing list, posted by Nathalie Schulz.)