Okay, I tried to put in tables and that didn't work. I'm trying again with
tabs. See if this makes more sense--Kelley

-----Original Message-----
From: McElwain, Paul Benjamin [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
In my working on the Variations FRBR implementation, as a data modeler, I
was struck by little attention had been paid to the relationships by the
FRBR Report.  I'm not surprised though, treating the relationships at at
"entity" level (having their own attribution) is a more obtuse exercise of
abstraction.

We do treat relationships as attributed "entities", for more information
about the "role" involved. (a creator may be as a composer)

One way to think about the originality of an expression of a work, being the
first ever expression, could be as an attribute of the relationship between
the work and expression.

Paul...

****

Paul,

I agree that from a theoretical perspective it makes a lot of sense to model
the original expression as an attribute of the relationship between the work
and that expression. Or to do what FRBRoo did and make classes like Work
Conception and F28 Expression Creation.

It's not really clear to me that in our particular situation there is any
practical advantage to trying to do that rather than creating a merged
work/primary expression entity.

This has to do with the kind of expressions we're mostly modeling and the
way we're trying to model them. Most of the moving image expressions that
average libraries deal with are defined not by what I think of as bundled
attributes, but are rather a set of independent attributes.

This is unlike the typical music expression, which I think of as a set of
bundled attributes. If you know you have a performance of X work on Y date
in Z venue then, if someone has previously created in an expression record,
you know a number of other things about that expression such as the
composer, performers, and arrangement of the piece without having to
re-verify them again. All those things could productively be stored as a
unit.

This also happens with film with various cuts such as airplane versions or
director's cuts. These do have some associated attributes, notably length,
but also perhaps a different editor. 

For the kinds of unbundled attributes that are common with moving images,
especially DVDs, there are a large number of attributes, like soundtrack and
subtitle languages, accessibility options (captions, audio descriptions),
and aspect ratio, that vary independently. With these kinds of unbundled
expression attributes, a cataloger has to reexamine all of them every time
there is a new manifestation. If there's a change in our knowledge of what
subtitles are on a specific manifestation, it does not have automatic
implications for any other manifestation that might have that same
constellation of options.

The other types of attributes that describe the original expression of a
film are those that never change because they are important facts about the
history of the work that we want to note in conjunction with any future
expression. Many of these are things that RDA says are attributes of
expressions that moving image catalogers would tend to think of as
attributes of works (e.g., casts and costume designers do not vary among
expressions so why record them on every expression?).

In a sense, at least for moving images, the original expression is bit of an
abstraction and in practice we get most of our information from reference
sources. 

At first, I thought we could just model these unbundled attributes of the
expression as attributes of the manifestation/publication since, as I
mentioned above, they have to be verified with every new manifestation
anyway. 

[Work record 1 is linked to Manifestation record 1]

Work record 1			Manifestation record 1
Dracula (1931)			OCLC#: 13754402
Tod Browning			Audio: English			
English


I ran into trouble with manifestations that include more than one work.

Some still work well enough, either because the expression-level information
is all the same or is unknown.

[Work record 1 is linked to Manifestation record 1]
[Work record 2 is also linked to Manifestation record 1]

Work record 1
Ursula (1961)
Lloyd Michael Williams				Manifestation record 1
English						1 DVD video (2005)	
						Experiments in terror
Work record 2					ISBN:     0976523922  
Journey into the Unknown (2002 )		Audio: English
Kerry Laitala
English						



However, in some cases, the expression-level information varies between two
works on a single manifestation/publication. The manifestation below
includes two versions of Dracula, each in its original language. For the
prototype, I just made two different manifestation records, which repeat
most of the same information. That doesn’t seem to me to be a desirable
long-term solution.

[Work record 1 is linked to Manifestation record 1]
[Work record 2 is linked to Manifestation record 2]

Work record 1			Manifestation record 1
Dracula (1931)			1 DVD video (1999)
Tod Browning			ISBN: 0783227450  
English				Audio: English	
				Subtitles:  English or French

Work record 2			Manifestation record 2
Dracula (1931)			1 DVD video (1999)
George Medford		ISBN: 0783227450  
Spanish			Audio: Spanish
				Subtitles:  English or French


So I think we do need the intermediate expression level, but I am not sure
if we need an actual expression record as in:
[Work record 1 is linked to Expression record 1 is linked to Manifestation
record 1]
[Work record 2 is linked to Expression record 2 is linked to Manifestation
record 1]

Work record 1		Expression record 1
Dracula (1931)		Audio: English
Tod Browning		Subtitles:  English or French
English							Manifestation record
1
							1 DVD video (1999)
Work record 2		Expression record 2		ISBN: 0783227450  
Dracula (1931)		Audio: Spanish
George Medford	Subtitles:  English or French
Spanish



Or just independent statements directly linking the work and the
manifestation without a record:
[Work record 1 is linked to various statements are linked to Manifestation
record 1]
[Work record 2 is linked to various statements are linked to Manifestation
record 1] (not sure how clear this one is without the table)

			
Work record 1		Audio: English
Dracula (1931)		
Tod Browning		Subtitles:  English	
English						
			Subtitles:  French	Manifestation record 1
			*************	1 DVD video (1999)
Work record 2		Audio: Spanish		ISBN: 0783227450
Dracula (1931)		
George Medford	Subtitles:  English
Spanish
			Subtitles:  French  


I’m not sure if I explained this very clearly. I have trouble getting my own
head around it sometimes. But FWIW, this is some of the thinking behind why
we did what we did the way we did it. It may in fact be a very film-specific
approach.

Kelley