[open-bibliography] More verbs. Electronic 'Items' (Yes, another FRBR thread)

Mon Jul 12 12:19:30 UTC 2010

I realize I forgot to mention "Differences Between, Changes Within: Guidelines on When to Create a New Record" from ALA (http://www.acrl.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alcts/resources/org/cat/differences.cfm), which also differs from the LC practice.

As a result from this multiplicity of guidelines which allow (or do not allow) for all kinds of variant, it is difficult to know precisely what information a specific resource has: what is the ISBN on the item, the number of pages, the precise dates on the item, and so on.

James L. Weinheimer  j.weinheimer at aur.edu
Director of Library and Information Services
The American University of Rome
Rome, Italy
________________________________________
From: open-bibliography-bounces at lists.okfn.org [open-bibliography-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of Weinheimer Jim [j.weinheimer at aur.edu]
Sent: Saturday, July 10, 2010 4:22 PM
To: List for Working Group on Open Bibliographic Data
Subject: Re: [open-bibliography] More verbs. Electronic 'Items' (Yes,   another         FRBR thread)

The guidelines followed by the Library of Congress, and therefore, by most other Anglo-American libraries are in "LC Rule Interpretation 1.0 Decisions Before Cataloging", which can be found at the Cooperative Cataloging Rules Wiki at:
http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/aacr2-chapter-1/1-0--decisions-before-cataloging---rev

Even before you begin to do anything, you must ask whether the specific item you are working with is a copy of something already in the catalog, or something new. That rather simple task is actually very complex.

They ask two apparently simple questions:
Before creating a bibliographic record, determine what is being cataloged. Answer these two questions:
1) What aspect of the bibliographic resource will the bibliographic record represent?
2) What is the type of issuance of that aspect?

Figuring out the answers takes you down some interesting paths. At the end of the Rule Interpretation, you will see some interesting guidelines that say what differences are allowed between one "manifestation" and another, e.g. different ISBNs do *not* have different manifestations.

I think it is important to realize that there is a great deal of variation between different agencies (publishers, libraries, other organizations) concerning what determines a manifestation and many libraries have their own interpretations as well. (For example, is a photocopy a new item or a new manifestation? Different libraries do different things) In any case, each field and each institution has different needs and I do not see agreement on any of this whether FRBR and/or RDA is accepted or not.

James L. Weinheimer  j.weinheimer at aur.edu
Director of Library and Information Services
The American University of Rome
Rome, Italy
________________________________________
From: open-bibliography-bounces at lists.okfn.org [open-bibliography-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of Ross Singer [rxs at talisplatform.com]
Sent: Friday, July 09, 2010 9:21 PM
To: List for Working Group on Open Bibliographic Data
Subject: Re: [open-bibliography] More verbs. Electronic 'Items' (Yes,   another         FRBR thread)

On Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 3:03 PM, Karen Coyle <kcoyle at kcoyle.net<mailto:kcoyle at kcoyle.net>> wrote:
Quoting Ross Singer <rxs at talisplatform.com<mailto:rxs at talisplatform.com>>:

Why not?  Could you have multiple representations of the same
'manifestation' (PDF, jpeg, PS, HTML, etc.).

I mean, those are still completely analogous to 'item', aren't they?

They're separate manifestations for publishers and (usually)
libraries. ISBN rules require a different ISBN for each carrier (back
to content v. carrier), although not all publishers follow that, and
it may not make sense where carriers are output on the fly.

Does apply to things that aren't books?  My mental picture was something more like:
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0406184

-Ross.

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