Question on RDA Relationships asked at Google+ Community "RDA Cataloging"

Question on Relationships in Resource Description & Access on Google+ Community RDA Cataloging - Answers from Experts at RDA-L

CATALOGUING A REVIEW:

I face a difficulty when recording a work relationship for a work which is a review of a critical edition of another work.

Ideally, I would like to be able to connect between a work (the review) and the expression of another work (the critical edition).

Here is an example:

WORK A: Baalbaki, Ramzi, born 1951. [Review of] Harun's edition of Sibawayhi's Kitab (2010)

WORK B: Sībawayh, died 796?. Al-Kitāb (ca. 780)

EXPRESSION B1: Sībawayh, died 796?. Al-Kitāb (ca. 780). (Critical edition by H. Derenbourg, 1881‒1885). Text. Arabic

EXPRESSION B2: Sībawayh, died 796?. Al-Kitāb (ca. 780). (Critical edition by A. S. Hārūn, 1966‒1977 ). Text. Arabic

WORK A1 is a review of EXPRESSION B2.

What do you suggest I should do? It seems that the relationship designators (here, "review of") apply either between two works or between two expressions but not between a work and the expression of another work.

But here, WORK A itself, not one of its expressions, is a review of EXPRESSION B2. How should I record this relationship?

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Response by Heidrun Wiesenmüller, Professor of library science at the Stuttgart Media University (Germany)

Salman,

I have no easy solution, but I agree there is an oddity here.

RDA indeed seems to restrict relationships to work-work and expression-expression, with no "cross-overs". Whereas this may be o.k. for other types of relationships, it doesn't fit descriptive relationships of the type you mentioned.

You're quite right to think that the review of a certain edition is a work in its own right. Of course, the review work has at least one expression of its own. But it would be weird to record the relationship only between one expression of the review work and the reviewed edition. This would miss the point that *all* expressions of the review work describe the reviewed edition. So the relationship should indeed be recorded between a work (the review) and an expression of another work.

It's interesting to compare the situation on expression level to the descriptive relationships on the level of manifestation and item (J.4.4 and J.5.2):
- description of (manifestation) A manifestation described by a describing work.
- description of (item) An item described by a describing work.

So in these cases, RDA allows to record a relationship between a describing work and a manifestation, and a describing work and an item. It seems to me that the same should be possible for a relationship between a describing work and an expression. So perhaps J.3.3 needs to be changed according to the pattern of J.4.4 and J.5.2 (I assume a proposal would be needed for this).

By the way, one might argue that these "descriptive relationships" between group 1 entities are really subject relationships, and shouldn't be here at all. They do stand out rather.

Heidrun

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Response by Gordon Dunsire, Chair, Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA

Salman, Heidrun and others

These issues are addressed in a submission from the JSC Technical Working Group to the JSC for its November 2014 meeting:

6JSC/TechnicalWG/3  High-level subject relationship in RDA (http://www.rda-jsc.org/docs/6JSC-TechnicalWG-3.pdf)

Cheers

Gordon

Gordon Dunsire
Chair, Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA

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Response by Heidrun Wiesenmüller, Professor of library science at the Stuttgart Media University (Germany)

Thanks, Gordon, that's great.
I haven't worked my way through all the documents yet, so had missed the fact that the proposal is already there :-)

Do I understand correctly that the descriptive relationship designators (with the proposed revisions and additions) would stay in Appendix J, i.e. still belong to section 8 (Relationships between works, expressions, manifestations, and items). So there is no plan to move them to section 7 (subject relationships)?

Heidrun

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Response by Gordon Dunsire, Chair, Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA

Heidrun

The JSC will discuss any improvements to RDA Toolkit associated with the Technical Working Group's recommendations in due course. There are no current plans to move the designators - but I think there are other submissions affecting relationship designators (I haven't had time myself to read all of the submissions).

Cheers

Gordon

Gordon Dunsire
Chair, Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA

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Response by Robert L. Maxwell, Ancient Languages and Special Collections Cataloger, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University

I would do:

Review of (expression): Sībawayh, ʻAmr ibn ʻUthmān, active 8th century. Kitāb. Arabic (Hārūn)

It should also be possible to use this access point in a subject field.

RDA doesn’t explicitly recognize a relationship between a work and an expression, but they happen all the time. In my opinion we should be able to record relationships between any FRBR entity and any other FRBR entity, as appropriate.

Bob

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RDA Blog Thanks Heidrun Wiesenmüller, Gordon Dunsire, and Robert L. Maxwell for their valuabe remarks

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