Date:         Wed, 16 Jul 2003 12:45:06 -0700
Reply-To:     Metadata Object Description Schema List <[log in to unmask]>
Sender:       Metadata Object Description Schema List <[log in to unmask]>
From:         Karen Coyle <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:      Re: mods-for-dummies questions
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In-Reply-To:  <[log in to unmask]>
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At 06:17 AM 7/16/2003 -0800, Bruce D'Arcus wrote:


>2) more a bibliographic question, but when is it appropriate to use the
>"manuscript" and "collection" flags?

Again, these are very library metadata-centric, so your metadata set may
not need them. A manuscript is... well, it's a manuscript, although today's
manuscripts are both hand-written, typed (on a typewriter) or printed from
a computer. The main thing is that the item is a one-off and hasn't been
published. In library catalogs, unpublished dissertations are coded as
manuscripts.

A collection is something that archivists recognize. All of the boxes of
letters by some famous author may be considered a collection. A group of
photographs or paintings purchased and "collected" by a person would be
considered a collection. Someone's rare books that are donated to a library
after their death (or as a tax write-off) would be a collection. It's a
collection if it's been collected by someone. You can have a collection of
things that are not "archival" in nature, an archive of things that are not
a collection, and various combinations in between.

This is something I would leave to the archivists who may be the only ones
who understand it.


>3) a book chapter that is in a book that is part of a series: this is a
>record with two nested relatedItem "hosts"?

Library records punt when it comes to series. The name of the series is
listed in the bibliographic record, and if the series has an ISSN that is
also included, but there is not real hierarchical relationship that would
give the series as a "host" in the sense that a journal is a host to a
journal article or a book is a host to a chapter. Basically, the MARC
record and library cataloging rules are fairly flat data representations so
there's very little explicit hierarchy. A human user may know enough about
series publications to understand that there may also be an entry in the
catalog for the whole series or that a search on the series name will bring
up all of the individual items in the series that the library has
cataloged. It's not very precise, however, since some libraries just
catalog the series as an item and others catalog some or all of the
individual items.

kc