[DCRM-L] Citations in RDA

Thu Aug 7 10:53:24 MDT 2014

The JSC Technical Working Group has just posted a paper of interest:
"High-level subject relationship in RDA"
http://www.rda-jsc.org/docs/6JSC-TechnicalWG-3.pdf

I recommend skipping ahead to page 4 of the report (and going no farther than page 5), where there is direct mention of Standard Citation Forms for Rare Book Cataloging. I copy the relevant portion at the end of this message.

If I read the paper correctly, it proposes two changes, both of which would be useful for our community:

1.      Recommendation 3:  For each WEMI entity, add a new RDA element (i.e. an attribute) in which we may record references to published descriptions. This field would, I believe, directly correspond to our current practice of recording citations as notes (in the 510 field). The paper proposes a label "Referenced to Publish Citation." RDA does not, currently, give any explicit accommodation for this data.

2.      Recommendation 4:  "Develop a set of designators that relate WEMI to the Work or Expression containing the citation." This would enable citations in the form of relationships to the works/expressions containing the information. It would allow us express the relationship to a specific Expression containing the citation, which is (I think) exactly what we want, given that SCF uses the Expression as the basic unit.

I'm keen to hear your thoughts. Provisionally, I suggest that we endorse Recommendations 3 and 4 (by way of our CC:DA Liaison).

Francis

<begin snip, p. 4>

Recommendation 2: Bring the RDA descriptive relationships designators into line with FRSAD by allowing only Work to be the domain of primary descriptive relationship designators for WEMI entities (and the range of their reciprocal designators) as indicated in Table 4, and by adding sub- property relationships to the new subject relationship element.

The Working Group recognizes that Recommendation 2 removes accommodation for one of the use cases that the "described in" relationship was intended to support. The "described in" relationship is the reciprocal of the "description of ..." relationship. The use case is illustrated by the descriptive practice that was specified in AACR2 1.7B15, References to Published Descriptions, using the MARC field 510.  Such references to published descriptions or citations are very frequently included in records for rare materials; there is even a published list of Standard Citation Forms for Rare Book Cataloging, the third edition of which is being prepared for publication.

These references provide detailed information that supports the identification of the particular resource (WEMI) being described.  While many of the bibliographies and catalogues that are referenced exist in only one expression (and therefore the "described in" relationship with range Work  is adequate), many exist in multiple expressions and the reference must often be to a specified Expression of the Work.

However, the semantics of the term "described in" are significantly different in this case. Recommendation 2 ensures the term means the reciprocal of "description of". The term "described by" can have the same meaning; this is another example of the problems of relying on labels. The nuances between "in" and "by" are those of extent: "in" indicating "part" and "by" indicating "co- extensive". Also, the term "description" can refer to unstructured or structured data about a thing. Recommendation 2 is consistent with unstructured data (a Work) which is co-extensive with its Thema, that is, WEMI.

The use case is consistent with a structured or unstructured description which is part of a specific Expression of a Work which is not intended to be about the particular subject of the description (the specified WEMI). Less ambiguous terms for a structured description are "metadata", "bibliographic record", "bibliographic reference", "citation", etc. The RDA element Preferred Citation is a Manifestation attribute, and therefore has a literal containing the text of the citation as its range. RDA refers confusingly to such a citation as an unstructured description. The definitions of the relationship designators appendix and appendix to contain the phrase "list of references". These have overlapping semantics.

The need to maintain RDA support for the "citation" use case and the overlap in semantics with at least one RDA element and several relationship designators suggests the development of a set of designators that relate WEMI to the Work or Expression containing the citation, such as "cited in" and "cites" for the reciprocal. These will be cross-entity designators with the issues discussed above. However, this does not preclude the addition of an attribute element for each of WEMI that accommodates the text of the citation to the Work or Expression, in a similar way to Preferred Citation. The generic label of the element might be Reference to Published Citation (or Reference to Published Description if "citation" is too narrow). A proposed definition is "A citation for a published description of a ...".

Recommendation 3: Add to RDA the elements: Reference to Published Citation (Work), Definition: "A citation for a published description of a work.", domain: Work; Reference to Published Citation (Expression), Definition: "A citation for a published description of an expression.", domain: Expression; Reference to Published Citation (Manifestation), Definition: "A citation for a published description of a manifestation.", domain: Manifestation; Reference to Published Citation (Item), Definition: "A citation for a published description of a item.", domain: Item.

Recommendation 4: Develop a set of designators that relate WEMI to the Work or Expression
containing the citation.

<end snip, p. 5>

_________________________________
Francis Lapka, Catalog Librarian
Yale Center for British Art, Department of Rare Books and Manuscripts
1080 Chapel Street, PO Box 208280, New Haven, CT  06520
203.432.9672    francis.lapka at yale.edu<mailto:francis.lapka at yale.edu>

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