Alex Satrapa wrote:
> One way around the problem of searching wildcarded DC field names could
> be for search mechanisms to treat "DC.Title" as including
> "DC.Title.Alternative" etc. Do we really need special Title fields? I
> mean *really* need them?. We'll end up with a McDonald's data repository
> - you'll have fries with everything. "I'll have DC.Title.Fries and
> DC.Creator.Fries, oh and could you throw in a DC.Format.Fries too
> please..." "Do you want DC.Title.Alternate.Fries with that?"
I can immediately imagine three sorts of titles that are different:
those that do not appear on the item, but are created by the
*cataloger*.
1) Uniform title (whatever form it takes). e.g. my example of Thomas a
Kempis' Imitation of Christ. The original title is Imitatio Christi.
2) The title of the larger item it belongs to. In my example, it is a
part of the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. In this case, the title
of the larger set appears on the individual item, but it has been my
experience that this does not always happen with web documents.
3) For non-roman alphabet items, there could be a transliterated title.
Different agencies and countries transliterate in various ways, and it
should be possible to account for them in the record.
All of these titles certainly help the user to find what they are
looking for, but they may/may not appear on the item, itself. They
should all be searched through a single "title" search, however.
> The special case of DC.Source.Creator is easy enough to synthesise by
> finding the DC.Creator of the DC.Source. DC.Creator.PersonalName is just
> the same as DC.Creator when the creator is a person, isn't it? A
> corporate name shouldn't look like a personal name, eg "Microsoft
> Corporation" is different looking to "Smith, John", and there's no
> individual called "Corporation, Microsoft" or "Microsoft, Corporation".
> Besides, in many countries, a company name would be "Schnell GmBH" or
> "Quick Inc." or "Zoom Pty. Ltd. (ACN 008 123 456)".
There are examples of personal names as corporate bodies. A quick
example from our catalog (I'm sure there are better ones)
------------
AUTHOR: Adam and Charles Black (Firm)
TITLE: Black's Warwickshire guide.
PUBLICATION: Edinburgh : Adam and Charles Black, 1866.
DESCRIPTION: xii, 220, 48 p., 5 leaves of plates (2 folded) : ill.,
maps ;
17 cm.
------------
Adam and Charles Black are serving as a corporate body here, not "Black,
Adam" and "Black, Charles", and the cataloger dealt with it
appropriately.
Do we need these distinctions for documents on the web? Perhaps. But in
any case, there needs to be some sort of guideline for dealing with
items like this, even if it says "A person can never be a corporate
body" (Not my opinion).
Jim Weinheimer
Princeton University
[log in to unmask]
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|