[open-bibliography] Is FRBR too complicated?

Mon May 24 13:43:36 UTC 2010

Quoting Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org>:

>
> My feeling is that FRBR has confused associative relationships (e.g.
> derived from) with a hierarchy (inclusion/subpart) structure -- the
> classic example is indicating derived relationships, say between a
> translation and the original which I think should be an explicit
> "derived-from" relationship rather than getting shoe-horned into an
> expression-work type setup as it seems to be (though pardon me if i
> have misunderstood).

Yes, I've maintained that WEMI are relationships, not THINGS. (Or as  
Dan Brickley said to me: FRBR has too many nouns, not enough verbs.)  
But that still doesn't solve the problem of what the THING is that  
relates...

>
> For me, the core useful part of FRBR (at least as compared to what
> seems to happen in most current catalogues) is the distinction between
> a
>
>   * "work (/expression)": the artefact in abstract semi-platonic form)
>   * "manifestation (/item)": something concrete e.g. book with an isbn
> / a (set) of recordings on a CD etc (of course it is useful to
> distinguish, as FRBR does, between the individual item and the set of
> all such items e.g. the print-run as represented by the ISBN).
>
> Thus, I'd like to see FRBR pared back to a Work-Manifestation core
> (perhaps with Item as an extra) together with a good set of properties
> to express relationships between works e.g.:
>
>   * is-derived-from (with subclasses such as translation, performance-of etc)
>     * I note most of these properties are in something like
> http://vocab.org/frbr/core.html but generally attached to
> expression-work relation not work-work relation
>   * is-part-of (for series, sets etc etc)

I have to think about this some, but it might work. The other aspect  
of FRBR that bugs me is that it doesn't really address functionality.  
For example, although there is the theoretical level of Expression  
that for texts is necessary to describe the language of the text, in  
practice the use of a language facet in library systems seems to work  
quite well. I'd rather present facets than force a user through  
hierarchical levels when navigating the catalog. WEMI is very awkward  
as a structure, and, as I've said before, the dependency between the  
entities forces you to create them even if you have little or no use  
for the data they hold.

>
> Some stripped down examples of trying to apply FRBR from my experience
> can be found here: <http://wiki.okfn.org/p/Bibliographica/FRBR>

What I have been trying to work out is a way to use the FRBR  
properties without having to put them into separate WEMI structures.  
Something tells me it should work -- that we could have a set of data  
elements that can be independent of each other, and that can be  
selected and recombined as desired. I'll keep struggling with that.

kc

>
> Regards,
>
> Rufus
>
> PS: I would also that this distinction would work well for a mapping
> to copyright/public domain considerations (central to the EUPD project
> I worked on): a Work would be something accruing a new copyright (I'm
> ignoring "print-setting" copyright here). For more on the gory details
> of doing PD status computation using FRBR-type concepts see:
> <http://www.rufuspollock.org/2009/03/12/computing-copyright-or-public-domain-status-of-cultural-works/>
>
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-- 
Karen Coyle
kcoyle at kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
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