[OLAC-credits] A few more thoughts on roles and translations

[Kelley McGrath]

I thought I'd say a few more things about what we want to do with the roles and translations. Roy Tennant asked me to speak about this project at the OCLC Research Library Partnership Systems Heads Meeting at ALA Midwinter. I prepared a couple of lists for that presentation that I am trying to attach. Let me know if they don't go through.

The first tab on the spreadsheet is a list of the roles or functions put into categories. This was just a quick-and-dirty attempt, but it does show a typical 80/20 distribution where only a few types of roles account for the majority. This list does not include all the credits with no function, which are a substantial portion (around 30% of the current file). Many of the credits with no function are from 26x and can be mapped to publication and distribution functions (we didn't include those in the form display as we did the "cast:" prefix based on the 511 indicator). The largest single category is for performers and cast. Some of the music credits could also fall into this grouping. The list also shows a long tail (which I got tired of trying to figure out what to do with hence the "uncategorized" category).

If you are on the RDA-L, you can't get away from the constant questions about what to do for a relator term for this or that function. It seems to me that relator terms are being added to the RDA list somewhat willy-nilly as people ask for them without any sort of coherent overarching framework. (I heard that Gordon Dunsire put the kibosh on new relator terms until the JSC can get this a little better sorted so it may be that the JSC feels this way as well). One thing we will get out of this project is a list of statements of responsibility for a particular format. This will be hard data that could be used to help make decisions about what relator terms should be included in RDA.

The second tab is a list of the role terms that could be put in a cinematography category. It includes both English language terms and translations. I haven't tried to deal with the director of photography/above the line vs. camera/below the line issue. There aren't a lot of translations yet as this is an old list. Again it's possible to pick out an 80/20 distribution where the common English terms predominate. That split is exacerbated by the fact that cinematography credits are often given in an English language note even when the statement of responsibility is given in the language of the film. Notice how many typos there are in the long tail.

Kelley

PS Have you annotated any credits yet this week?
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