[openbiblio-dev] Feedback on my BibJSON record

[Tom Morris]

Thanks for the clarifications and explanations, Karen.  A few comments
inline below:

On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 6:25 PM, Karen Coyle <kcoyle at kcoyle.net> wrote:

> On 2/21/13 10:20 AM, Tom Morris wrote:
>
>>
>> 1. dc:publisher should be "Seuil" and not include publication place and
>> year "Paris\n : Seuil\n, 1986",
>>
>
> dcterms has publisher and date, but unfortunately lacks date of
> publication. It may be possible to find this in BIBO or some other
> bibliographic schema. However, I have seen others place an entire
> publication statement in dcterms:publisher for this exact reason. It's a
> real lack in DC.


I'd argue abusing the semantics of fields/properties by using them to carry
information other than what is intended is at best prolonging the agony and
at worst inviting chaos.  If it's not a dc:publisher, put the information
in myveryown:publication_statement.


>  2. the author's name is not in natural order "Palom\u00e9ra,
>> Marie-France de"
>>
>
> There is no requirement for the author's name to be in natural order. In
> fact, the bibjson.org page shows examples with both.


Fair enough.  How does one encode in BibJson which order is being used?
 Having to guess doesn't benefit anyone.


>  3. the title should be "Princesse Finemouche" not "Princesse Finemouche
>> / Babette Cole #59; [trad. par] Marie-France de Palom\u00e9ra",
>>
>
> Again, DC doesn't provide a place for the "statement of responsibility"
> that is in much library data. So the choice is to lose that, or to stuff it
> in title. It also doesn't have a separate subtitle element, so that too has
> to be stuff in title.


Or define new BibJSON fields to carry them.  That's a title, an author's
name, a series number (?), a translator's name, and a parenthetical
expression all mushed together in a field that claims to be carrying the
title.  How would anything except a human ever make sense of that?



> It also seems strange that the author Babette Cole is not included
>> anywhere and that the translator is listed as the author.
>>
>
> A translator is generally dcterms:contributor. dcterms doesn't have an
> author just dcterms:creator.
>

 OK, so Babette Cole should be a dc:creator and Marie-France de Palomera
should be a dc:contributor?  Or should we just be explicit and say that
BibJSON uses "author," "editor," "translator," and whatever other terms are
needed?

I like JSON as much as the next programmer, but I'm not seeing how
promoting semantic nonsense benefits anyone.  We might as well just use
BibTex or MARC or one of the other standards that has a long history of
ambiguity.

Tom
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/openbiblio-dev/attachments/20130221/dd43bd5b/attachment.html>