After an edible lunch and good conversation at the Iron Cactus with Kathryn LaBarre (my advisor) and Emanuele Quintarelli (Accenture Italy SPA, Rome), I went to the Theoretical topics in FRBR session.

[Why were so many people told the Iron Cactus was good and authentic Tex-Mex? Twas neither particularly good nor authentic. It was pricey and slooow.]

I was about 10 minutes late thanks to the slow service at lunch. Allen Renear (UIUC) was up (why not Yunseon?) and talking about alternatives to Platonism in FRBR, that is about conceptualism (FRBRoo) and nominalism (Svenonius, 2000, chap. 3).

Jonathan Furner (UCLA) was next and talked about “The ontology of subjects of works.” In other words, it was about FRBR Group 3 entities )concept, object, event, place) and the Group 1 and 2 entities that got sent to the Group W (er, 3) bench. Something in my brain gets all warm and fuzzy when I hear someone ask, “What does it mean to say that p is about z?” This, of course, leads to other wonderful questions, such as, “What is the logical nature of the relationship between a proposition p and the thing that p is (said to be) “about”? and “What is the ontological nature of the thing that p is (said to be) “about”? And, yes, for those of you cringing out there, the answers do have implications in the world.

Next up was Jerome (Jerry) McDonough (UIUC) asking the question, “Is a METS file a bibliographic record and, if so, for what?” His answer was, “Yes, but not a particularly good one.”

In the early evening was the Welcome Reception and SIG Rush. After that, I hung out in the hotel bar with my new friends Jenn (UB) and Nicole (FSU).

[Scott, please do her right.]