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How versatile is this resource type?

Simon McMillan 1222905814|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

I'm confronted with some examples of "online or web publications" that, in a printed environment, wouldn't be classifiable under any of the main MACAR resource types. It's the WWW that facilitates their existence, and their "format" is determined, usually, by the parent site to which they belong. In other words, these single pages, or even single entries on a page or site, have characteristics which are determined by their environment and don't conform to a traditional set of descriptive rules. Some of them might be classed under the DEST N category (Entry), but others are closer to journal articles or reviews, though the site where they're located isn't a journal - it's just a site.

I could use the MACAR website resource type, but I don't think its terminology or definition captures the fact that the objects I'm describing are entries or parts of something bigger.

Has anyone else encountered such material, and how have they dealt with it?

Re: How versatile is this resource type?

neilgodfrey 1225268885|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

This issue is part of a broader discussion that is still ongoing in the Dublin Core and SWAP communities. And it will become increasingly significant with Object Reuse and Exchange (ORE). The actual thing that ties all the different bits and pieces together from various other sites and databases may be nothing more than an html or xml encoding page. But that actual thing or encoding page is nothing but a series of coded commands to collect stuff from everywhere else and to display it all in a certain way. That encoding page is the closest thing to the actual resource. I think of it as the "central nervous system" of the bigger thing. The bigger thing, that is, the display that users see and use, is not what is harvested, nor even possibly actually identified. And it does not even really exist — except when that central nervous system is activated. What is stored and manipulated and edited and used in a database will not be, then, what is actually seen by users.

So we are looking at the concepts of technical FRBR manifestations that are not manifest, of resources that are not real, of resource entities that may not really exist — except as an xml datastream linking to a host of other uri's and a series of commands for certain software to display it in certain configurations — and even those display configurations may well be variable, never constant. For example, is an xml datastream might be viewable as pdf or html or other, and the user has the option of deciding this without ever actually seeing the "original document", which is the xml datastream.

The answer is not with us yet. We don't know what it will finally be. It may well be that RDF and ORE — and the Semantic Web — will force us into new ways of conceptualizing "resources" and "resource types".

In the meantime, I would think the safest option would be to store and describe etc webpages the way LOC's Minerva does (www.loc.gov/minerva/). And then be prepared to mark such collections with a sign, "Watch this space!"

Neil Godfrey

Re: How versatile is this resource type?

neilgodfrey 1225269377|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

and wait to see what RDA says in the meantime too — bearing in mind that that also may well undergo revisions.

Re: How versatile is this resource type?

Simon McMillan 1226453671|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

In MACAR resource type terms I think "webpage" and "website" have a similar heirarchical relationship to that of "book chapter" and "book". In terms of metadata capture there are similar requirements in showing that relationship.

last edited on 1226453850|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover by Simon McMillan + show more

Revised definition

Simon McMillan 1226625769|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Following from discussion at the MACAR teleconference on 12/11/08 I would like to suggest the following amended definition (changes in bold). MACAR was reluctant to accept my suggestion that a separate "webpage" resource type might be useful, but asked to suggest an amendment to the definition of the "website" resource type.

Definition: A collection of connected files or webpages, or a single webpage, along with integrally linked files such as graphics, sound and multimedia files, that can be accessed via a domain or subdomain on the internet.

Notes: If a website (and especially a webpage) possesses the characteristics of another resource type, prefer that resource type. For example, journal article, review, etc.

last edited on 1226626246|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover by Simon McMillan + show more