On 1/18/18 5:15 PM, Kyle Banerjee wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 18, 2018 at 2:26 PM, Karen Coyle <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
>> But this gets really head-bangingly hard pretty quickly. Just to say
>> that we should not assume that FRBR actually works with real data - it
>> was never tested as such.
> 
> 
> Which raises the question of why we as a profession pay as much attention
> to it as we do?
> 
> Good models explain the real world and help people clarify things in their
> own minds -- FRBR doesn't qualify.
> 
> Despite countless articles, books, presentations, classes, etc on the
> subject over the past 20 years, FRBR confuses staff of all levels and
> seasoned professionals get bogged down applying it to garden variety
> situations. In a best case scenario, using FRBR to help someone understand
> bibilographic relations is like using OSI to teach someone how web apps
> work -- and I don't think we're looking at a best case scenario.... ;)

*sigh* yes to that. For a relatively short and possibly entertaining
intro to my concerns on this, my SWIB talk [1] gets into FRBR by about
minute 12, but the preceding minutes help set the context for my
remarks. Of course I also cover it in my book [2] but that's a longer
account. The elevator pitch is:

FRBR is a mental model of the bibliographic universe that some
catalogers appear to find useful. FRBR, as defined, is NOT a viable data
model.

kc
[1] http://bit.ly/2n7XbBo
[2] http://kcoyle.net/beforeAndAfter/index.html (open access)

> 
> kyle
> 

-- 
Karen Coyle
[log in to unmask] http://kcoyle.net
m: +1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet/+1-510-984-3600