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

Tue Jul 13 09:24:16 UTC 2010

> -----Original Message-----
> From: open-bibliography-bounces at lists.okfn.org 
> [mailto:open-bibliography-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf 
> Of Weinheimer Jim
> Sent: 12 iulie 2010 18:02

> 
> But this becomes a problem for comprehensibility and means a 
> lot of work. My example was always this page of Thomas a 
> Kempis' Imitation of Christ: 
> http://www.ccel.org/ccel/kempis/imitation.html. Is this one 
> "thing" or several? (This site has actually gotten rid of 
> several formats over the years, e.g. 

Both :-) (remindes me of trinitarian vs. unitarian debate :-)

Well, dear Jim, we see there 5 "things". They have something in common (or at least CCEL believes
so, putting them on the same page :-) How would you call that commonality ?

They are different incarnations of that commonality. Especially the mp3 incarnation looks pretty
different than the other 4 for me. How would you call these incarnations ?

> 
> Also, with materials in sites such as the Internet Archive, 
> how do we deal with them:
> http://www.archive.org/details/imitationofchris00newy
> 
> Is this 8 manifestations? That's a lot of extra records and 
> work. Is it best for the readers and is it worthwhile to deal 
> with them this way? And what happens when the Archive decides 
> to automatically create, let's say XML versions for every 
> document. Are these all going to be different manifestations? 

How would you call them ? You have to record some differences, for the sake of the user or in order
to understand the different ways to mark "places" within the text (e.g. pages in pdf vs. locations
in Kindle format).

Besides, the "plain text" incarnation contains the string "^ccottifna to tl)e oriflinal intention of
ti)c ^utbor." which I do not see in the other incarnations :-)

If you are more catholic than the Pope, you produce 8 records. Otherwise, you exercise judgement and
you produce less :-)

> 
> For these sorts of reasons, I personally have major 
> theoretical problems with the concept of "manifestation" 
> especially with practical effects when applied generally. I 
> see the "manifestation" primarily as a throwback to the 
> catalog/unit card, and I think there are far better ways of 
> handling them with modern tools. 

Name them for this case, please.

Dan Matei