Bib context set

[Nick Nicholas <opoudjis@optushome.com.au>]

Given the profusion of national bibliographical identifier schemes,  
making bib.identifierAuthority have a limited vocabulary is not going   
to scale, and it would be useful to allow ad hoc registration of new  
authorities with LoC. Just as info-uri does. In fact, there's no   
reason why the info-uri listing of identifier schemes cannot be used   
in toto here.

I can see a use for part index modifiers. Journals often have "New  
series" for their issue numbers, indicating they've started counting   
from 1 again; the current scheme does not differentiate between new   
series and old series numbering. (The alternative is to make "1 NS" a   
distinct bib.volume index entry from "1".)

Numbers in a monograph series are indicated by bib.titleSeries=/  
bib.portion=partNum nnn ?

The redundancy of bib.role=author/bib.roleAuthority=marcrelator vs.  
dc.creator is messy, although given that MARC already has both   
creators and authors, no messier than what is already in place.

The restriction of subject classes to Place, Title, Name and   
Occupation looks unmotivated. Why not for instance Curriculum   
Objective, which is also a MARC index term, or chronological terms,   
also in MARC?

Dates would be more usefully refined by modifier than by separate   
index (as is done for bib.name), since the date is being specialised   
from a default entry. In fact, I'd argue the same for subjects.

The example bib.edition=canadian is surely misleading: that's  
bib.originPlace (for the publication, since this is bibligraphic  
information), and a proper example would be bib.edition=9

--
Dr Nick Nicholas           [Stephen] King published _The Green Mile_ as
Link Affiliates,           the first serialized novel since the 1920s,
Melbourne,                 in a gesture that was meant to recall the
Australia.                 serial work of Dickens. No doubt, King is the
skype:opoudjis             Dickens this century deserves.
opoudjis@optushome.com.au      -- Richard von Busack, _Metro Santa  
Cruz_,
http://www.opoudjis.net     Dec. 8-15 1999, p. 29.