[libdb-develop] roles and genres

[Bruce D'A. <bd...@fa...>]

On Feb 6, 2004, at 7:13 PM, Morbus Iff wrote:

> Fair enough. The big challenge is showing the proper
> list, at the proper time. Say we have books and movies.
> It's quite easy to say "show me only roles related to books".
> But, now, add two different authorities. How would we display
> them? Both in the same list ("author [marc]", "author [bob]").
> What about equivalence? Which is the more proper authority to use?

You're right; this is tricky.  I don't necessarily have any good 
answers, but let me think aloud...

What about using the MARC list as the generic LCD?  You then have 
genre/community-specific extensions.  So MARC has director, writer and 
probably a few other movie-related terms.  You then have a "film" 
extension that covers everything else.  Each term, no matter where it 
is, then has a list of possible genres/types they can be associated 
with.

But this issue of "type" classification by which you do this mapping is 
REALLY difficult.  For example, we could say that the sort of terms you 
have now could apply to all films.  We could then say there's a similar 
group of terms for written texts, including (but not limited to) books. 
  But what about legal texts?  Personal communications?

I'd like to think this through some more because it has bearing beyond 
this project.

Bruce