xbiblio-devel digest, Vol 1 #59 - 2 msgs

CSL Development
1

Hi Bruce,

The structure of MODS and of CSL assumes that the publication date
for a journal article is basically a property of the journal,
rather than the article.

Does valid MODS assume or require this? I.e., are both of your
examples valid MODS:

<mods ID="darcusb2005">

[…]

   <relatedItem type="host">

[…]

      <part>
         <date>2005-05-01</date>
      </part>
   </relatedItem>
</mods>

… or:

<mods ID="darcusb2005">

[…]

     <originInfo>
        <dateIssued>2005-05-01</dateIssued>
     </originInfo>

[…]

   <relatedItem type="host">

[…]

   </relatedItem>
</mods>

Am not sure which I prefer.

I definitely prefer the latter for the reasons James mentioned.

Generally, I would prefer the following rule:

All information that’s unique for a given resource should be on that
resource’s own level while information that’s only unique to the
related container item should go into the container item.

IMHO, this assumption should make it a lot easier for developers to
find and associate things within the MODS hierarchy.

What about reprinted articles in containers later (ie collected
volumes of classic papers). those would need two dates, wouldn’t
they

Yes. Having multiple dates on several levels should be actually a
feature of MODS so that it can handle such complexity. Using the
above assumption, the date on top level would describe the date when
the original article was published, while the date in the ‘related >
host’ item is the date of the book volume.

If no date on top level is given for an article, this would mean that
the article was originally published together with the book/journal.
In other words, if there’s no top level date the top level item would
inherit the date of the container item.

Besides dates, the same problem exist for editors and ‘extent >
pages’. I.e., instead of:

Snow cover effects on Antarctic sea ice thickness Ackley S author Weeks W editor [...] Sea ice properties and processes - Proceedings of the W.F. Weeks Sea Ice Symposium [...] book 16 21

I would prefer:

Snow cover effects on Antarctic sea ice thickness Ackley S author [...] 16 21 Sea ice properties and processes Weeks W editor [...] book 299

Note that in the latter example, the book editor is given within
the ‘related > host’ item and not on top level (which is far more
intuitive, IMHO). Plus, the top level contains the page range of the
individual article while the ‘related > host’ item contains the total
number of pages for the book.

MatthiasOn May 14 2005 at 10:49 AM, Bruce D’Arcus wrote:
On 15 May 2005 at 20:25 -0700 Bruce wrote:
On 14 May 2005 at 20:26 -0700 James Howison wrote:

Matthias Steffens ---- @Matthias_Steffens

refbase — a web-based, platform-independent,
multi-user application for managing scientific
literature, references and citations

        http://www.refbase.net