Anticipating new media: A faceted classification of material types

Abstract

Abstract:The emergence of new media types, many seemingly without counterparts in the non-digital world, challenges the readiness of existing knowledge organization schemes to accommodate them. A knowledge organization scheme based on a faceted analysis of existing classes of bibliographic materials is likely to accommodate new developments better than one based on a list of unanalyzed material types. The faceted analysis undertaken here, in which seven facets are recognized (content, generation of content, recording of content, publication/distribution, physical characteristics, perception/use, and relationships) shows the inadequacy of the traditional view of the bibliographic community of a fundamental distinction between content and carrier; interaction between content and carrier is common and enters into the characterization of material types. The facet analysis is validated by applying it to two new material types, wikis and blogs.

A Comparison Between the RDA Taxonomies and End-User Categorizations of Content and Carrier

“…28 Further, they rightly point to a number of other facets and sub-facets that are involved in the ontology of library resources, at least among university OPAC users, and that need to be systematically incorporated as metadata if the search interface is to be optimal from usability and functionality perspectives.…”

“…Green and Fallgren reexamine various manifestations in order to construct a faceted classification of material types. 20 In their scheme, there are seven facets, each comprising several sub-facets: content, generation of content, recording of content, publication/distribution, physical characteristics, perception/use, and relationships. These facets cut across "carrierness," so that even content contributes to the definition of some "carriers" (e.g., newspapers).…”

Keep it Simple: Using RDA's Content, Media, and Carrier Type Fields to Simplify Format Display Issues

“…The cataloger also had to take into account the type of publication/mode of issuance (serial vs. monograph), published versus unpublished, type of reproduction (multiple versions), and method of management (library bibliographic item-level control vs. archival collection-level control). Green and Fallgren (2007) argued that the categorization of materials went far beyond just separating content from carrier in the description and that the characteristics of both content and carrier tended to bleed together in resources. Hider (2009aHider ( , 2009b) did extensive research into the way users categorized resources and attempted to determine if the RDA terminology did a good job of categorizing resources in the same way that users did.…”

Resource-Type Descriptions For School Library Resources: Australian and New Zealand school library staff prefer user- friendly classifications to RDA and GMD vocabularies

“…As Hider & Huthwaite (2006) state, the intention of RDA is to provide guidance on representation of bibliographic data, not its presentation on the OPAC. Green and Fallgren (2007) note that whilst "an intuitive expression is key for helping users achieve identification and filtering goals" this can be achieved by "mapping natural language expressions to (combinations of) less intuitive attribute values" (p.90).…”

“…For example, a video disc (carrier) requires a video device (media) whereas an audio disc (carrier) requires an audio device (media). Green and Fallgren (2007) recognised that whilst content type appears to be orthogonal to media and carrier type, they are in fact enmeshed because some content types are, and can only be, expressed via certain media formats. For example, a three-dimensional moving image is not expressed via audio media, and spoken word is not expressed via microform.…”