Hi

There seems to be a general trend to presenting merged records to users,
as part of the move towards FRBRization. If records need merging this
generally means they weren't totally identical to start with, so you can
end up with conflicting bibliographic data to display.

Two examples I've come across with this: Summon can merge
print/electronic versions of texts, so uses a new 'merged' material type
of 'book/ebook' (it doesn't yet seem to have all the other possible
permutations, eg book/audiobook). Pazpar2 (which I'm working with at the
moment) has a merge option for publication dates which presents dates as
a period eg 1997-2002.

The problem is not with the underlying data (the original unmerged
values can still be there in the background) but how to present them to
the user in an intuitive way. With the date example, presenting dates in
this format sometimes throws people as it looks too much like the author
birth/death dates you might see with a record.

I guess people must generally be starting to run into this kind of
display problem, so it has maybe been discussed to death on ... wherever
it is people talk about FRBRIzation. Any suggestions? Any mailing lists,
blogs etc any can recommend for me to look at?

Thanks for any ideas
Graham