Discussion and emails related to adding LCMPT links within the UNIMARC medium of performance vocabulary entries

LCMPT, http://id.loc.gov/authorities/performanceMediums.html, and LCGFT, http://id.loc.gov/authorities/genreForms.html

http://www.iaml.info/unimarc-field-146-medium-performance (database)

IFLA namespaces:

http://iflastandards.info/ns/unimarc/terms/mop/

http://iflastandards.info/ns/unimarc/terms/fom/

October 25, 2017 (Kimmy)

I am about the start the work (next week?) on mapping our codes to LCMPT using either skos:closematch or skos:exactmatch. I decided not to use skos:broadmatch, skos:narrowmatch, skos:relatedmatch at this stage of the mapping work because I anticipate the number will be small, and we can looked at these ones more closely later on. Chances are, once the discrepancy is discovered, one or the other side will want to propose new terms on the narrower level.

The question I have for Massimo: We are using the export from the Metadata Registry. Do we need to do anything to do to prevent problems from overlapping revisions, should someone else export and re-import the entire vocabulary? Later, we will ask you how to re-import the data.

July 31, 2017 (Massimo)

Dear Katerina, thanks for your observation; I made a mistake, being late as always: I was referring to steel-kitara (not slide, sorry) in https://finto.fi/muso/en/page/p812?clang=fi (I see some "closely matching" English concepts from id.loc.gov appearing in YSO, such as Plucked instruments in https://finto.fi/yso/en/page/p1510?clang=fi) muso seems to be the most complete one, as far as I understand. There are some more cases where I have doubts, but normally terms are absolutely equivalent to existing ones.

July 31, 2017 (Katerina)

Hi all! @Massimo: in SEKO (http://finto.fi/seko/en/) there is no such term as "slide guitar". You can find it in Musa (http://finto.fi/musa/en/), which is Finnish Music Thesaurus. Please use only SEKO for comparing UNIMARC medium of performance terms. And if there is something else, I can help with, let me know :) katerina.sornova@helsinki.fi

July 27, 2017 (Massimo)

To Damian, you are not "jumping" here, you are absolutely essential to the group!

To Chris, you are right, in fact the hierarchy in Unimarc is not at all the best; "strings" were considered "bow string", differentiated with "plucked string" instruments; that's why the aeolian harp was in the miscellaneous group, which BTW means absolutely nothing.

The Finnish ontology, even with a few mistakes (e.g. slide steel guitar, which is a technique, not an instrument), is perhaps better, considering different perspectives of pertainance of each instrument (piano is both strings and keyboard, etc.).

July 26, 2017 (Chris Holden)

With regard to Kimmy's comment on discussing "potentially problematic terms": One of the possible issues that came to my mind is when two terms in LCMPT and UNIMARC appear to be synonymous, but fall under different broader terms. For example, "aeolian harp" in both LCMPT and UNIMARC appears to represent the same instrument, but the terms falls under "zither" and ultimately "string instrument" in the former, while falling under "Miscellaneous, other, unspecified instruments" instead of "string instruments" in the latter.

Julya 27, 2017 (Damian Iseminger)

I apologize for jumping in here, as I am not on the group, but I don't think this is necessarily a problem. In fact, it points out the benefits of mapping the vocabularies, because one vocabulary organizes the concept differently than the other vocabulary, and by mapping them, we can see both mappings. 

July 25, 2017 (Massimo)

I agree that SKOS properties are the best thing to do.

Yes, since October there are about 250 more variant terms; I am at present working on Finnish and Swedish. I think that before proceeding we should update the OMR. Next 18-25 August I will ask Gordon Dunsire on how to proceed; there will also be a discussion on where to base IFLA's namespaces, as the OMR version needs to be updated. A decision of the Governing Board is expected on 18 August.

I agree that a discussion on issues in the detail of each entry is important, and that may be independant from OMR decisions, so we can start it as soon as we want.

July 24, 2017 (Kimmy)

Damian Iseminger was on vacation earlier. He wrote back today. He suggested that we use the SKOS properties that are built-in in the Open Metadata Registry (SKOS:exactMatch, SKOS:closeMatch, SKOS:broadMatch, SKOS:narrowMatch, SKOS:relatedMatch). He sent me an OMR import spreadsheet pre-populated with existing data. These SKOS properties are already there - with blank spaces for us to fill with LCMPT URIs. Tracey Snyder offered to recruit volunteers from MLA to help with this work.

The next step, I think, is to check with Massimo to see if there have been any changes since the codes were last imported into the OMR in October 2016. Once that's done, we will try to set some ground rules about how to assign properties. I anticipate having an important discussion with the MLA folks later on about the small number of tricky entries. I can't think of any off hand, but can pass around a few potentially problematic terms right now, so we can discuss here internally?

July 13, 2017:

Kimmy: I emailed Damian Iseminger (Library of Congress) and Tracey Snyder (MLA) for a brief background summary of this project so far. This way, we will all start on the same page. I will follow up after 2 weeks if I don't receive any response.

February 17, 2017:

Dear Joseph,

I am writing to you to make you aware of a possibility of collaboration between the IAML Cataloguing Section and the Music Library Association (IAML-US) Cataloging and Metadata Committee.

At the RDA Steering Committee meeting in Frankfurt, Germany in November 2016, as chair of the Music Working Group I was asked to convene a group to consider the possibility of merging the Library of Congress Medium of Performance Thesaurus (LCMPT) and the UNIMARC Medium of Performance lists into a single vocabulary. The lists have complementary strengths and weaknesses. UNIMARC is extremely strong in its multi-lingual access, but is not as strong in terms for non-Western instruments. The opposite is true for LCMPT.

At this meeting, it was decided very early on that it would be nearly impossible to merge the vocabularies into an unified whole. The resources are simply not available for such an undertaking. However, both vocabularies are available in linked data instances: the UNIMARC vocabulary on the Open Metadata Registry at http://iflastandards.info/ns/unimarc/terms/mop/ and LCMPT at http://id.loc.gov/authorities/performanceMediums.html . Because both vocabularies have SKOS instances, the group decided that the best way forward would be to use the mapping properties of SKOS to link the two vocabularies to one another. At the conclusion of the meeting, I was tasked with coordinating the various stakeholders, including the U.S. Library of Congress, MLA, IAML, and IFLA to make this a reality.

Because of personal circumstances (new position, moving, etc.) I was not able to start in on this until recently. In January I contacted the Library of Congress to determine if it would be willing to add mappings from LCMPT to UNIMARC in the linked data version of LCMPT. At this moment, the Library of Congress doesn’t have the time to examine this particular issue, as it is currently working on other projects. However, the library saw no problem with the linked data instance of the UNIMARC vocabulary containing mappings to LCMPT.

So my question to the IAML Cataloguing Section, as the maintenance agency of the IFLA codes for field 146, is if it would be interested in possibly participating in a joint project with the Music Library Association Cataloging and Metadata Committee in creating a set of mappings between the UNIMARC Medium of Performance terms in the Open Metadata Registry and LCMPT? I have made preliminary inquiries with Tracey Snyder, chair of the Music Library Association Cataloging and Metadata Committee and she would like to discuss this matter at their meeting next week. But in order to do so, she would like to know if IAML is interested in pursuing this opportunity.

I hope to hear from you soon.

Sincerely,

Damian Iseminger

Head, Bibliographic Access Section

Music Division

Library of Congress

disem

7-0204

June 14, 2017: 

Hello all, I noticed that the IAML Cataloguing and Metadata Section business meeting is a week from today and that it includes an agenda item about the possibility of adding LCMPT links within the UNIMARC medium of performance vocabulary entries. I just wanted to drop you a line to confirm that we ought to be able to get some folks from MLA's Cataloging and Metadata Committee (specifically the Vocabularies Subcommittee and possibly the Encoding Standards Subcommittee — the chairs of which are copied here) to help IAML with this effort when it gets underway.

Thanks, Damian, for bringing this project idea forward.  

Thanks,

Tracey