In closed-worlds, where people can learn a system, and in table-based databases, where changing the schema (or querying varied data) is often painful, and in some programming contexts it makes sense to use abstractions that would not make sense to more ad-hoc consumers of the data. That’s the mindset in which FRBR is written imho.

That’s not to say that abstractions are bad – they are very useful and, as others pointed out in the comments above, my specific classes can be abstracted (all novels are works etc). It’s important to go that way around though, as a consumer of the data can make their own generalisations but cannot specialise your generalisations.

I should blog some overall suggestions on modelling for Linked Data…

Any subsequent thoughts on the matter?

One point I’m not sure about is that generalisation isn’t so useful – it can be. If two systems can be generalised (er, abstracted even) to a common form, you can make analogies across the two.

Do you ever use them, in the way that FRBR specifies, _except_ in the context of discussing FRBR?

rob

This comment was originally posted on The FRBR Blog

This comment was originally posted on The FRBR Blog

FRBR is a model to describe bibliographic data and metadata, created by librarians. It is only focused on things that libraries used to have. But the old library world is changing. Information (the core business of libraries I guess) is no longer bound to physical items in central locations.
So I think FRBR is not so bad as such, but as said by a number of people here, the way it’s implemented is important. And I would like to add, that the FRBR model and the FRBR implementations should have clear and open options for relationships with things on the outside. Only that way can the FRBR conceptual model be implemented in a useful manner.

I think the main thrust of what I was trying to say still stands, that an abstract model is much less use in practical application than a specific one. I have no issue with FRBR, I agree it has some value, but with so many real-world problems struggling to fit into it my concern is that people will model with the 4 WEMI classes directly – and that would be rather limiting.

FRBR was only ever supposed to provide a theoretical model so we could our heads around the relationships. I always assumed there would many models that manifest it (if you will) into to practical applications. Your model is one such model; its scope/terminology happens to mostly focuss on books and movies (which is fine for that kind of an application). The article “Assessing FRBR in Dublin Core Application Profiles” in Ariadne http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue58/chaudhri/ looks at how other models do/don’t map onto FRBR.

The DCAM Dublin Core Abstract Model is similar to FRBR except it is clear it is only abstract (because it says ‘abstract is my middle name’). Communities are then building models that they need on top of that theoretical model, chopping bits out that are redundant in their context, adding other bits in.

I wonder if maybe you got the relationship between the book and the novel wrong – you said in FRBR-land they are connected at the expression level, but I think they are connected at the work level – Wuthering Heights re-imagined by William Wyler is a related work, the fact he used the book expression to arrive at that new work isn’t material. Therefore, the FRBR model achieves the same as your alternative. But I’m no FRBR expert.

That last paragraph, while stupidly complex, proves the worth of FRBR – that we are ABLE to discuss these relationships and compare models. Before FRBR there was “um, all these models seem to be similar but I can’t quite put my finger on it”. It’s a stake in the ground we can talk around.

Of course FRBR isn’t ‘right’ or ‘finished’ as there are still lots of questions. Theoretical frameworks evolve over time as our understanding increases, especially as we test them out in the real world, using models like yours, and having discussions like this.

This comment was originally posted on Twitter