This may be one area where FRBR is not exactly clear on the directions its relationships take, or how extensive the cataloguing should be.

An album with Beethoven's 7, 8 & 9th Symphonies performed by the London Philharmonic would be a manifestation containing three independent expressions of these works, but the album wouldn't be a work by itself. You can have dependent forward relationships, i.e. "Work is an Expression contained in a Manifestation" but, as far as I know, there's no way to specify that a manifestation containing independent works as a separate work unto itself, and still stay within the FRBR model. (please, correct me if I'm wrong...)

In the textual realm, I would think an analogy would be a collection of poems being considered as a collection of independent works, since a poem could be contained in multiple anthologies and each poem is often an independent intellectual entity. Same with a collection of short stories. However, there are pronounced differences in scale between music and text, since the possibilities of different expressions of poetry and textual materials (e.g. an audio version of William Shatner reading Leonard Nimoy's poetry) are considerably smaller and less frequent than the the number of different expressions possible for a musical work (e.g. the performances of ten different orchestras, plus the number of different print editions, performance versions, commentaries or DVD versions would all be different expressions of Beethoven's 7th Symphony.)

It further breaks down when considering things like the Encyclopedia Britannica. Is the Encyclopedia the work, or is each individual entry (sometimes quite lengthy and exhaustive) considered independent works?

It seems to me that aggregating independent works into a singular container expression is certainly expedient, but does not necessarily conform to the letter of the FRBR law.  If someone wants to find a given poem and if it isn't listed as an independent work, then they'll still need to (somehow) know the exact anthologies that contain it, since the granularity stops at the level of the container item and not at the level of the true "work". The answer is to list it in a Table of Contents field, but then we're back at square one where we depend on the indexing of the Table of Contents fields to uncover the contents of an entity, rather than the FRBR vision of having an explicitly defined and catalogued set of relationships.

-Andrew

On 2010-03-16, at 6:30 PM, Jonathan Rochkind wrote:

> If a text aggregate "is" an expression -- that expression must belong to SOME work though, right?
> 
> And if the individual things inside the aggregate ALSO exist on their own independently (or in OTHER aggregations)... and you want to model that (which you may NOT want to spend time modelling in the individual cases, depending on context)... dont' those individual things inside the aggregate need to be modelled as expressions (which belong to a work) themselves?
> 
> In general, Jenn has spent more time thinking about these things in terms of music-related records than even the long discussions on RDA-L, and I think has even authored a position paper for some body on this subject?  
> I am guessing that in musical cataloging, the individual things inside an aggregate often DO exist on their own independently or in other aggregations, and for the needs of music patrons, that DOES need to be modelled, and I don't see how to do it except to call those things works of their own too?    If Symphony X is a work, then it's still a work when an expression of it is bound together with Symphony's A, B, and C, right?  
> Jonathan
> 
> Karen Coyle wrote:
>> Jenn, I can't claim to have spent sufficient time looking at this,  but... are you on the RDA-L list? Because we just went through a very  long discussion there in which we concluded that a text aggregate  (possibly analogous to a sound recording aggregate) is an expression,  not a "set" of separate work/expression entities. Your example implies  the latter, with the aggregate being described only at the  manifestation level. (And now I'm confused as to what the work would  be in something like a text collection, such as an anthology of poems.  Would the anthology be a work?)
>> 
>> kc
>> 
>> 
>> Quoting "Riley, Jenn" <[log in to unmask]>:
>> 
>>  
>>> The Variations/FRBR project at Indiana University   (http://vfrbr.info) is pleased to announce the release of an initial   set of XML Schemas for the encoding of FRBRized bibliographic data.   The Variations/FRBR project aims to provide a concrete testbed for   the FRBR conceptual model, and these XML Schemas represent one step   towards that goal by prescribing a concrete data format that   instantiates the conceptual model. Our project has been watching   recent work to represent the FRBR-based Resource Description and   Access (RDA) element vocabulary in RDF; however, due to the fact   that this work represents RDA data rather than FRBR data directly,   and that much metadata work in libraries currently (though perhaps   not permanently) operates in an XML rather than an RDF environment,   we concluded an XML-based format for FRBR data directly was needed   at this time. We view XML conforming to these Schemas to be one   possible external representation of FRBRized data, and will be   exploring other!
>>>  representations (including RDF) in the future. We define   "implementing FRBR," as the conceptual models described in the   companion FRBR and FRAD reports; at this time we are not actively   working on the model defined in the draft FRSAD report. Perhaps the   most notable feature of the Variations/FRBR XML Schemas is their   existence at three "levels": frbr, which embodies faithfully only   those features defined by the FRBR and FRAD reports; efrbr, which   adds additional features we hope will make the data format more   "useful"; and vfrbr, which both contracts and extends the FRBR and   FRAD models to create a data representation optimized for the   description of musical materials and we hope provides a model for   other domain-specific applications of FRBR.
>>> 
>>> A User Guide with details on the structure of the Schemas and how   they relate to one another may be found at   http://vfrbr.info/schemas/1.0/UserGuide.pdf, and links to all   Schemas and documentation may be found at   http://vfrbr.info/schemas/1.0. We hope this Schema release will lead   to further discussion of FRBR implementation issues within the   community. Comments and questions on the Variations/FRBR Schema   release may be sent to [log in to unmask]
>>> 
>>> Variations/FRBR is generously funded through a National Leadership   Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services   <http://www.imls.gov>.
>>> 
>>> (And a big kudos goes to the V/FRBR project team:   http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/projects/vfrbr/people/index.shtml.   Thanks to all of you, and especially to Paul, Mark, and Ilias.)
>>> 
>>> Jenn
>>> 
>>> ========================
>>> Jenn Riley
>>> Metadata Librarian
>>> Digital Library Program
>>> Indiana University - Bloomington
>>> Wells Library W501
>>> (812) 856-5759
>>> www.dlib.indiana.edu
>>> 
>>> Inquiring Librarian blog: www.inquiringlibrarian.blogspot.com
>>> 
>>>    
>> 
>>