Last Week in FRBR #15
Fairly slow this week in FRBRland. Here are some links.
Bilder, Does a CrossRef DOI Identify a Work?
Geoffrey Bilder asked the question Does a CrossRef DOI Identify a Work? (A DOI is a digital object identifier, often something rather cryptic-looking such as 10.1038/nature02999, that identifies an article in Nature). An article in a journal is a work (to be exact: what you hold in your hand, if it’s in print, is an item exemplifying a manifestation of an expression of that work) and if a DOI identified a work then that would be extremely useful. But:
Tony’s recent thread on making DOIs play nicely in a linked data world has raised an issue I’ve meant to discuss here for some time- a lot of the thread is predicated on the idea that CrossRef DOIs are applied at the abstract “work” level. Indeed, that it what it currently says in our guidelines. Unfortunately, this is a case where theory, practice and documentation all diverge.
… CrossRef DOIs should be probably assigned at the expression level and different expressions should be assigned different CrossRef DOIs. This is because assigning a CrossRef DOI at the higher “work” level is generally not granular enough to guarantee that a reader following the citation will see what the author saw when creating the citation. For example, one translation of a work might be substantially different from another translation of the same work.
Ronald Murray lecture at British Library
Ann Chapman’s FRBR Lecture at BL describes the talk that the Library of Congress’s Ronald Murrary gave at the British Library.
So how might this work in practice? Typing in ‘cats’ as a search term in my public library catalogue today brings up 500 results. There is no order to the list, it includes both fiction and non-fiction titles and it doesn’t separate out different forms of resource. I could limit the search to items in my local branch (213 results) or limit it by media – large print, say, which gets me just 7 results – but however I limit I am still faced with an unordered list of adult and junior fiction and non-fiction titles in various media.
Now, if the catalogue had been designed with FRBR principles and a MARC Format enabled for RDA defined data, then my experience would be different. For example, options to limit my search for content type and audience would make it easier to find a book written for adults. Adding in a further limiter for media type means I could restrict the search to large print titles or e-books. Even if I don’t limit in these ways, if the right data is in the record (and the system is designed to do this) the results display could show the items in different groups – all the adult non-fiction text resources first, then junior non-fiction, then junior fiction, then videos, say. Another way would be to start with cats as a search term; the first results display might simply say ‘500 items found’ and ask you to choose limiters (e.g. adult/junior, fiction/non-fiction, text/video/images).
Yáñez, Keepin’ Up
Israel Yáñez noted that he got his library school diploma in the mail (congratulations!) and this is how he celebrated:
Not wanting to be left behind on the FRBR/RDA front, I compiled a collection of handouts I had gathered, during the last year or so, of presentations on the subject by people from whom I want to hear (including my cataloging professor Dr. Robert Ellett).
The collection came out to 92 pages. I sent my order to FedEx Office Printing Online (coil binding and tabs included!). Total cost under twenty bucks. An investment in my continuing development, I figure.