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We called it "FRBR-inspired" since it probably wouldn't pass muster as an orthodox FRBR interpretation. We were looking to experiment with a practical approach that we thought would make it much easier for patrons to discover moving images in libraries and archives. If you haven't read it, the "about" page gives a general overview of our approach at http://blazing-sunset-24.heroku.com/page/about Our top level is a combination of FRBR work information and information about what we are calling the "primary expression." We haven't made any internal distinction between these two types of information. This enables us to record together the data that we think people expect to see about the generic moving image and reflects the sort of information that is given in IMDb, the All Movie Guide, and film and TV reference sources. This is also the data that we would want to re-use in every MARC record for a manifestation of a given movie. This also allowed us to get around some of the areas of more orthodox FRBR modeling that we found unhelpful. For example, FRBR doesn't allow language at the Work level, but we think it is important to record the original language of a moving image at the top level. In addition, RDA has mapped a number of functions, such as art director, costume designer and performer, to the expression level. We would prefer to present these at the top level. It is hard to imagine a version of Gone With the Wind with a different costume designer or cast that would still be the same work. So all the Seven Samurai data you listed above belongs either to the work or the primary expression. We mingle expression, manifestation and item information in the version facets on the right. We don't show any explicit expression records. In this demonstration we are not actually identifying any unique expressions, although in the future we will probably want to do this for what I think of as "named expressions." Since this is a demo, we are working with a limited number of attributes and the only expression-level facets we provide are soundtrack and subtitle languages. In this sense, our approach is similar to the near manifestation idea that Simon mentioned. We are not trying to assert that we have identified particular expressions. Rather, we are trying to provide a mechanism for the user to identify the set of items that meet their needs. It is not clear to me that libraries are always in a position to accurately identify expressions. Rather than providing a hierarchical view where the user selects a work, then an expression, and so on, as is common in FRBR presentations, we permit the user to begin at any FRBR level. The user is invited to limit by as many characteristics as they desire to delineate the set of things that they are interested in. They only need to select as many attributes as are important to them and no more. This may not meet the needs of all scholars, but we hope that it will meet the vast majority of general purpose user needs. It's a bit of a different approach than I have seen elsewhere, but I think it works particularly well for moving images. One of the main reasons I think this is because of the types of expressions that predominate in commercial moving images. I will try to explain some of my thoughts on types of expressions below. 1. Expressions that can be reduced to controlled vocabulary options These are the most common types of commercial moving image expressions, especially in the DVD era. They are distinguished by characteristics that such as Soundtrack language(s) Subtitle language(s) Accessibility options (captioning, SDH, and audio description) Aspect ratio (although in this era of widescreen TVs, full screen modifications are less common) Colorization Soundtracks for silent films These can be full described based on standardized data (although for the silent film soundtracks, this would involve multiple pieces of information, i.e., musical work, composer, conductor, performer(s), etc.) DVD often contain what essentially are multiple expressions in that they offer multiple soundtrack and subtitle options and may offer multiple aspect ratios. A silent film on DVD may come with alternate soundtracks. All of these can be combined in various ways by the viewer, which can make for a large number of expressions contained in a single manifestation. 2. Named expressions These are versions that are different in moving image content due to have been edited differently. Examples include Theatrical release Director's cut Unrated version Although Martha Yee found a strong correlation between differences in duration and the likelihood that two things represented two different expressions, this doesn't always work. The archetypical example of Blade Runner was released on DVD with five different versions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Versions_of_Blade_Runner), all of which had run times within a few minutes of each other. These types of expressions would benefit from their own identifier and some sort of separate display. In public and academic libraries, this type of moving image expression is far less common than the first type. There are no examples of this type of expression in our sample data. Many more subtle expressions of this type cannot practically be identified by the individual library cataloger because the publishers do not provide the necessary information. Many films released on DVD have been remastered or restored or modified in some way, but it is not clear how to usefully or consistently record this information even when it is provided in some form. For example, it sometimes seems like every release of the Star Wars films must be slightly different, but the videos don't come labeled in any way that's useful for identifying them. There is a page at Wikipedia tracking some changes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_changes_in_Star_Wars_re-releases) and an enormous thread on the release of the original theatrical versions (http://sideshowcollectors.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12157). 3. Manifestations with additional content Many manifestation could be considered to be new expressions because of the presence of additional content. These types of expression don't affect the content of the moving image work itself. These additions could be potentially treated in a couple ways and the decisions of individual cataloging agencies are likely to vary. a) Additional content recognized as a work in its own right Any additional content is theoretically a work in its own right, but there is a cost-benefit analysis involved in deciding to treat it that way. In some cases, DVDs come with bonus features that contain content that the library might potentially have bought (or has already bought) independently. These would benefit from being described as separate works. There are a couple examples of this in our data set. If you do a search for Citizen Kane, you'll get the movie plus a TV documentary called The Battle Over Citizen Kane. Both of these have been issued separately, but the manifestation listed as " DVD (2001)" under both titles represents the same manifestation, which includes the TV documentary as supplementary content. Whether it is necessary to inform users in some way that these are on the same disc at this point or not, I am not sure. b) Undifferentiated additional content listed with the manifestation DVDs often come with an abundance of special features, most of which are probably not worth the time it would take to describe them as separate works. We have not included any of this type of information in the demo, but one possibility would just be to list the content with each manifestation. Merging the expression and manifestation facets gave us a simpler interface and we don't think it harms most viewer's ability to find what they want. The four levels of FRBR make a lot of sense from a theoretical perspective (although it is easy to see that there often are multiple layers of expressions and that works have many recursive relationships). For moving images, in many cases, users care more about the manifestation format (DVD vs. VHS vs. Blu-ray vs. streaming) than about expression characteristics. There is also not always a hard and fast line between what goes in a record as expression and manifestation information. For example, Criterion Collection is generally recorded as a publisher. However, for many users, it likely serves as a proxy for expression since Criterion is known for the quality of its videos. According to their website, "Every time we start work on a film, we track down the best available film elements in the world, use state-of-the-art telecine equipment and a select few colorists capable of meeting our rigorous standards, then take time during the film-to-video digital transfer to create the most pristine possible image and sound. Whenever possible, we work with directors and cinematographers to ensure that the look of our releases does justice to their intentions." (http://www.criterion.com/about_us) Well, that was a bit of a long-winded reply and didn't really answer your question, but I hope it was helpful in framing what we're trying to do. This is still very much an experiment and there are a number of data modeling problems that I glossed over in order to make the demo work, but which would have to be resolved for a larger-scale application. Kelley Karen Coyle wrote: > > Kelley, > > do you have somewhere documentation on which properties/attributes > are > associated with each FRBR entity? I ask this in part out of my > ignorance of moving image cataloging, and therefore I am having > trouble translating from the FRBR documentation to what appears in > your prototype. I did my usual search on "seven samurai" and the > display (which I assume represents the Work) reads (in part): > > Alternate Title: > Seven Samurai > Director: > Kurosawa, Akira, 1910-1998 > Genres: > Feature; Fiction; Drama; > Language: > Japanese > Country: > Japan > Original Aspect: > Full screen ( 1.37:1 ) > Run Time: > 206 > Color: > B&W > Sound: > Sound > > I'm curious as to which are Work attributes and which are Expression > attributes. Also, is there an example that shows one work and > multiple > expressions? > > kc