Hi Joe,

You wrote:

> On Wed, 16 Jan 2008, Jakob Voss wrote:
>> Someone just has to define was 'holding' is and what information it must
>> carry, so we can define a simple holding interchange format that is not
>> as fuzzy and overblown as most of the library most other library
>> standards. As a sideline we implement another part of FRBR (a mapping
>> from frbr:manifestation to frbr:item)
>
> I've been fighting with the issue of what do you return in response to a
> query (in the context of federated search systems ... but for scientific
> data, not bibliographic) for almost 4 years now.
>
> Although I think FRBR helps to frame the problem, the real issue is that
> there are many reasons why someone might ask the question, and without
> knowing what they're trying to solve, we don't know what sort of a record
> we should be returning.

A holding webservice is not meant to be asked by human beeing with fuzzy
information needs in mind. Instead it is just one service to tell you
where an already identifier manifestation can be found. If you still
don't know which exact manifestation (for instance you don't mind which
edition of a book), then the holding service needs to be queried for
each possible manifestation.

> (and, to make things more complex, I think there's a group 1 entity that's
> missing in FRBR -- the concept of 'text' in the scope of the specific
> words that are used but without the formatting, so I can de-duplicate at
> the translation level, rather than only once pagination and other
> typesetting have been applied, at the Expression level.  The best
> correlation I can come up with to the problem in terms of bibliographic
> records is the question 'Do you have a copy of the King James Bible?')

I don't see the problem here. The King James Bible is a frbr:expression
of the frbr:work Bible or a frbr:work of its own (I never really catched
the difference between frbr:work and frbr:expression). If you ask for
the text of the King James Bible then you ask for a frbr:item of that
work/expression with specific additional characteristics of containing
no formatting but only the text. At http://ebible.org/bible/kjv/ you can
download the King James Bible in different formats - each file is a
frbr:item of its own.

I think the problem of applying FRBR lies in the lack of authority
files. There is no easy way to link

http://ebible.org/bible/kjv/kjvtxt.zip (Plain text version)

with the general concept of "The King James Bible" because there is no
registry of frbr:work/expressions. In some cases LibraryThing does a
good job to define works, in other Wikipedia may be a better choice.

The question 'Do you have a copy of the King James Bible?' can be
answered very well with FRBR in two steps:

1. First you ask back - "do you mean the English Christian Bible first
published by the Church of England in the 17th century"

The answer could be: yes, I mean
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorized_King_James_Version

2. Provide a choice of frbr:manifestation or frbr:item that are
connected to the URI of "King James Bible" in the first questions.
Examples are:

http://ebible.org/bible/kjv/kjvtxt.zip (Plain text version zipped)
urn:isbn:9780826511362 (Vanderbilt University Press, 1969)
..


> ... anyway, the point is -- you have to define 'holding', or you can't be
> assured that the response to your request is the correct granularity of
> information to answer the question you're trying to ask.

Ok, then I'd define a holding an instance of frbr:item with the
properties "location" (a building, an institution, an URL...),
"identifier" (call-number, item-number, URL...) and "availability"
(available, next week, only on campus, free for download...). As shown
in my ad-hoc example "location" can be nested, but that's not the point.
  Defining holding is not the problem - you just have to look how
holdings are *practically* used in libraries (instead of starting a
theoretical discussion). The problem is more how to get the data out of
library systems.

Greetings,
Jakob

--
Jakob Voß <[log in to unmask]>, skype: nichtich
Verbundzentrale des GBV (VZG) / Common Library Network
Platz der Goettinger Sieben 1, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
+49 (0)551 39-10242, http://www.gbv.de