See how many rules you are coming up with? Rules are normal in the
day-to-day practice of cataloging. There's nothing wrong with them. But
if that's the way you're interpreting them, I'd better do the same thing
or we'll end up with chaos!
BTW, I don't believe I ever said that searchers should be shown the raw
metadata. Only the display should make the metadata more comprehensible.
For example, in our catalog,
240 10 Imitatio Christi.‡English
Displays as:
Uniform Title: Imitatio Christi. English
My question is: if we decide to place these additional titles in the
record, we should consider allowing the system to display them in a more
understandable fashion so the user can better understand the record. If
these special titles are not given a special code, they cannot display
in a special way. Perhaps we could direct the metadata creators to put
this information for the uniform title in a public note.
Note: English translation of Imitatio Christi.
Jim Weinheimer
Princeton University
[log in to unmask]
Alex Satrapa wrote:
>
> James Weinheimer wrote:
> >
> > Alex Satrapa wrote:
> >
> > > <META NAME="DC.Title" LANG="la" CONTENT="Imitatio Christi">
> > > <META NAME="DC.Title" LANG="en" CONTENT="Imitation of Christ">
> > > etc
> > > <META NAME="DC.Language" CONTENT="en">
> >
> > I personally do not understand this. I'll admit that there is a Latin
> > title (we can always throw in an extra title) but as a user, I do not
> > understand what this title means in relation to the document I'm looking
> > at.
>
> If the user is english-speaking, you'd show them the english title, and
> possibly the latin title. If the user is french-speaking, you'd show
> them the french title. In this case, there is no french title, so I'd
> show them the latin one.
>
> > The words "Imitatio Christi" do not exist in the resource. It is
> > something that must be created by the metadata-cataloger. For the user
> > to understand what he/she is looking at, should this title be labelled
> > in a special manner?
>
> No special labelling, please! Ick. We're not trying to re-create MARC.
> If you want a handful of different title fields to pick from, use MARC.
>
> I don't think the user should ever be shown the raw metadata. The
> discovery engine would process it some way and show the user something
> that makes sense in the context of the discovery engine.
>
> > ...Would we
> > handle a French translation of the second book of the Iliad in the same
> > way?
>
> I'd wing it like this:
>
> DC.Title = "Iliad (Vol 2)" <-- someone know what this really is?
> DC.Creator = "Homer" <-- NOT Simpson
> DC.Contributor = "<name of the translator>"
> DC.Language = "fr"
> DC.Source = "Iliad (Vol 2)"
> DC.Relation = IsPartOf "Iliad"
>
> > The idea of corporate authorship has a very long history. You can read
> > it in "Corporate authorship" by Michael Carpenter. Suffice it to say
> > that, if you did that in our library catalog, you'd get in trouble.
>
> Wow. There's a whole book on one of the rules you guys follow to get the
> arcane values to stick in your MARC database fields/subfields.
>
> Do you know many people who've actually read that book, and are still
> sane? :)
>
> Why can't we stick to something simple like... if the book was written
> by a number of people, list their names. If the book was written by a
> company, list the company. If two authors wrote a book together, list
> their names. If the two authors happened to be a company, writing as the
> company (rather than just as the two authors), then list the company.
> Are there any cases where it doesn't make sense to do so? I'm talking
> about the minimal-ruleset environment of DC, not the
> 7-volumes-of-AACR-and-specialist-books-on-extreme-cases ruleset of MARC.
>
> Corporate Authorship sounds to me like one of those things that are nice
> for encoding special information about the way a book was written, but
> at the same time it's one of those things that makes a library catalog a
> pain in the neck to create, maintain, and understand.
>
> > > Well... a person can't be a corporate body. A person can (in Australia
> > > at least) be a sole trader (in which case, they trade as John Doe, Sole
> > > Trader). Maybe I've missed something?
> >
> > What about the "President of the United States" instead of Bill Clinton?
>
> "The President of the United States of America" is still the name of a
> person, or a company, or a role, isn't it? You could be really thorough
> and list Bill Clinton too. Just because you have special rules for
> encoding that kind of information into MARC, doesn't mean we have to
> make up new rules for DC (or inherit rules from MARC).
>
> > There are many instances when works made in an official capacity are not
> > the same as personal utterances.
>
> I agree - indicate that the creator was a "role" rather than a "person",
> by putting in the name of the role, perhaps complemented with the "real"
> name of the person behind the role.
>
> Regards
> Alex
>
> --
> Alex Satrapa
> tSA Consulting Group Pty Ltd.
> Canberra, Australia
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