Karen,
This is fun, but I ought to be working.
Me> Work is not defined in AACR or AACR2.
Karen> "Uniform title. 1. The particular title by which a work that has
appeared under varying titles is to be identified for cataloguing
purposes." (AACR2)
"The title of the work is the word, phrase, or group of characters
naming the work. There may be one or more titles associated with a
work. If the work has appeared under varying titles (differing in
form, language, etc.), a bibliographic agency normally selects one of
those titles as the basis of a ?uniform title? for purposes of
consistency in naming and referencing the work." (FRBR_2008.pdf)
Work isn't defined (neither are any of WEMI), but the uniform title
was/is a title representing the work. (And not to be confused with the
uniform title *heading*, which is a uniform title plus qualifiers,
like language, edition, etc. -- which seems to be something like an
expression.)
Me> Right. Uniform title is defined. Work is mentioned, but remains undefined. Thus, one reason for remaking AACR2 into RDA: to formally define basic concepts and work on from those concepts.
Karen> I believe that author/uniform title authority records are being
considered representations of works in some quarters (e.g.
www.fla.fi/frbr05/McCallumTEXT.pdf).
Me> Right. MARC/AACR2 A/UT authority information works well as a de facto work authority record. If one extends this a bit, it works well for expressions, too. It could work fairly well for music, serials, certain "classic" textual works, maybe some other things in which UTs are well-established and appreciated.
Karen> In the Work entity, there is a title field, which is the title of the
Work. So in the case of our Moby Dick, what would be the title of the
Work? If you have different Works that represent, say, an 1852
edition, a 1997 edition with a preface by Smith, and another that is a
2003 edition with a preface by Jones, would they have the same work
title? but different Work entity identifiers?
Me> Not right. They [the edited works that include the work Moby Dick along with other works such as introductions, etc.] would have different work titles and different identifiers. And if the editors did any editing of the text of Moby Dick itself, then they'd contain different expressions of Moby Dick, too (unless their work as editors of the text was too insignificant to be concerned about.)
Using in a general way the example of MARC/AACR2 authority records for an authority + uniform title, you'd create records that asserted the existence of the work entities, provide a unique number to identify the entity, a name or names for human usability, additional information to make the assertion itself clearly. You'd have one for Melville's Moby Dick. Another for each of the named editions you want to identify as aggregated works. (The number of situations in which this will be valuable will be few, but those few time may be important to the communities that most often use these works. And one could just associate these particular aggregated works (editions of a work with relevant apparatus) at the manifestation level. I believe this is the position, more or less, of the other IFLA discussion paper, the Aggregates as Manifestations, the O'Neill & ®umer Proposal: http://www.ifla.org/files/cataloguing/frbrrg/aggregates-as-manifestations.pdf
The argument for this is that there is no pressing need for any other, richer association. No need to create work records for _these_ aggregates. I think that is right in almost all cases. But in some cases it may make sense to group the pieces together under a new aggregate work.
Nice talking with you.
Matthew
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