Off the Mark

While not exactly a crush—although I won’t speak for others in the class—any teacher who makes a discussion so much fun that students willingly stay in their seats for 45 minutes past the end of class, an evening class no less, deserves a fair bit of respect.

Last night in LIS590OH, Ontologies in Humanities, Allen made axiomatizing FRBR so much fun that we all stayed an additional 45 minutes before we decided we needed to end. Several stayed even longer. I would have liked to but I had a bus to catch and an early class this morning.

Things got real interesting when we were discussing whether there can be such a thing as an unexpressed work, or an unrealized expression. For my money, it pretty much comes down to your beliefs on the language of thought (for the unexpressed work anyway, which is what we focused on). But then most of this is irrelevant philosophizing. As much as love I such things, I think they are side issues to FRBR. Yes, the conceptual model should account for (or preclude) such things and it doesn’t.

Some folks tried to bring up previously but no longer existing entities. FRBR does need to account for such things but, again for my money, it only needs to account for real examples and not possible world-type scenarios. I have little truck with possible worlds and most forms of (philosophical) modality quickly leave the realm of actually having an impact in the real world.

One thing that did not come up was imaginary works or imaginary expressions, manifestations or items. So as soon as I got home I posted to our class forum [I see no reason I cannot reproduce my own statements]:

Some of you are probably happy we didn’t go down this road. Nonetheless….

My question, which I prefer to keep in the context of FRBR and bibliographic control and not as an abstract philosophical discussion—although if you make it interesting enough I may join in—is can there be imaginary works?

Now these would be imaginary works that have been also imaginatively expressed, realized and embodied. Do they exist within the realm of the bibliographic universe (BU)?

Don’t answer too quickly. First off:

Mark’s assumption #1: Not sure what xxxxx’s version of the BU is, but mine requires an existing (or once existing, although I could care less about modality/possible worlds, etc.) entity (persons/institutions) that wants to bring the sorts of entities that are described by FRBR Group 1 entities under control.

Mark’s assumption #2: Catalogs and catalog records are not the only things FRBR are concerned with. In fact, FRBR has no inherent concern with catalogs or catalog records (possibly). It is trying to model the BU universe, which consists of various forms of citation and discourse, among other things.

Various extant works do, in fact, mention imaginary works (down through the item). There are works which have as a subject an imaginary work. There are discourse communities around some of these works. [And, boy, do I sure wish I could think of an example, but I do know they exist. So if anyone can think of an example, please throw it out here so the discussion can be better focused. Or. See below for some quick possible examples.]

It might be easier with an imaginary “cultural heritage” work or musical. Again, I can’t think of one at the moment. The best I can do—I’m afraid to toss it out here because it comes with too much other baggage and, thus, may be a bad example, or even not one—would be the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey. I mean the monolith as an imaginary work … to its imaginary item.

Hopefully, the fact that it was built so the movie could be filmed isn’t going to get in the way. If it does, I might respond with, “What if it was done with computer graphics?” But again, all this is extraneous to my question.

The imaginary object that is the monolith in 2001 has a vast field of discourse around it. It may even be cataloged in some way. It is certainly referenced and cited. These are things which FRBR as a model of the BU is concerned with.

So, can imaginary works … imaginary items exist and might they need to be brought under some form of bibliographic control using the FRBR model?

Possible examples:

Reviews of imaginary books
Flickr imaginary book & CD covers pool
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy [ignore the fact that there is a book/series/movie/play/radio series with this title for the moment. I am referring to the work that those works/expressions are named after.]

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Maybe that should be fleshed out a bit more for here, but I’ll leave it as is with only one name change to protect the not so innocent, and a fixed typo. And I did mean imaginary musical work, not an imaginary musical, but in shorthand it’s the same thing. It’s just not very clear.
There are no replies yet, but then I don’t think my fellow students have found the new forums yet because with 4 postings I seem to be talking to myself.

Anyway, just wanted to say that any professor who can have students engaged enough to stay an extra 45 minutes in an evening class deserves a bit of respect, and maybe even an intellectual crush or two. As some of you already know, Allen Renear rocks!