<monogr> and <analytic> should be allowed in <bibl>

[TEITechnicalCouncil]

3.11.2.1 of the Guidelines:

http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/CO.html\#COBICOL

suggests that the three levels of bibliographic item, analyitic, monographic and series, MUST be distinguished in <biblStruct>, and MAY be distinguished in <bibl>. However, currently only <series> is available in <bibl>; <monogr> and <analytic> are not. I think the ability to distinguish these bibliographic levels in <bibl> is important, so this deficiency should be rectified, for consistency with <series> and with the Guidelines.

Original comment by: @martindholmes

[TEITechnicalCouncil]

Is the distinction made by the @level on <title> not sufficient for <bibl>?

Original comment by: @lb42

[TEITechnicalCouncil]

The issue is that without some kind of bracketing mechanism, it can be difficult to tell what elements of a reference belong with the analytic, the monogr or the series. The use-case I'm concerned with is where <bibl> is used to mark up an existing bibliographic reference which is formatted according to a style guide; the order of elements is then dictated by the style guide, and this can make for difficulty figuring out what belongs with what, because style guides are sometimes guided by custom rather than rational organization.

But over and above that, the guidelines already say we should be able to use <analytic> and <monogr> in <bibl>, and we can't. I think the guidelines are right and the schema is wrong; they're useful and should be available.

Original comment by: @martindholmes

[TEITechnicalCouncil]

But if you want to mark up a pre-existing formatted bibliog reference what guarantee have you that the components of <analytic> or <monogr> will be in the right order, or even contiguous?

The passage you reference reads "<p>These three levels may be distinguished within a <gi>bibl</gi> element, and must be distinguished within a <gi>biblStruct</gi> element by means of the following elements" I would prefer to rewrite it as follows:

<p>These three levels may be distinguished within any bibliographic element. Within the <gi>bibl</gi> element, the status of particular parts must be inferred (for example by use of the <att>level</ attribute on <gi>title</gi>. Within a <gi>biblStruct</gi> element however, they are explicitly distinguished by means of the following elements:

I think we also need to add something to the discussion of punctuation, (to say that it must be supplied within bibl) but that's a separate issue.

Original comment by: @lb42

[TEITechnicalCouncil]

• milestone: --> AMBER

Original comment by: @lb42

[TEITechnicalCouncil]

>But if you want to mark up a pre-existing formatted bibliog reference what >guarantee have you that the components of <analytic> or <monogr> will be in >the right order, or even contiguous?

No absolute guarantee, but they usually are -- otherwise humans would find them hard to parse out. Here's an example:

<bibl type="article" subtype="book_chapter" xml:id="carlin_2003"> <author><name><surname>Carlin</surname> (<forename>Claire</forename>)</name></author>, <title level="a">The Staging of Impotence : France’s last <hi rend="italic">congrès</hi></title>

dans

<title level="m">Theatrum mundi : studies in honor of Ronald W. Tobin</title>, éd. <editor><name><forename>Claire</forename> <surname>Carlin</surname></name></editor> et <editor><name><forename>Kathleen</forename> <surname>Wine</surname></name></editor>, <pubPlace>Charlottesville, Va.</pubPlace>, <publisher>Rookwood Press</publisher>, <date when="2003">2003</date>.

</bibl>

The first block is <analytic>, the second <monogr>.

With regard to punctuation, I don't think we should particularly prescribe that punctuation must be supplied in <bibl>; we should just say that it usually is. It's more than conceivable that people will use <bibl> for structured references because they find that the constraints of <biblStruct> make it impractical.

Original comment by: @martindholmes

[TEITechnicalCouncil]

Proposal is to revise the wording to make clear that <analytic> and <monogr> as grouping elements are available only in biblStruct; and to discuss how to do analogous things in <bibl>

Original comment by: @lb42

[TEITechnicalCouncil]

I think Lou's proposal does not match what Martin asks for: that <analytic> and <monogr> be included in the content model for <bibl>. And it's not clear what sort of prose Lou would add about "how to do analogous things in <bibl>". How would you? Martin shows that you encode all the pieces without any container elements, so processing to find the piece you want is difficult. I can't come up with any good reason not to allow <analytic> and <monogr> in <bibl> when <series> is already allowed there.

Original comment by: @kshawkin

[TEITechnicalCouncil]

Yes, Lou's proposal is not what I originally wanted; all it does is to clarify that what I originally wanted is not available. That's a disappointment from my point of view, since I still think <monogr> and <analytic> should be available in <bibl>. I agreed with the proposal since it clarifies an currently confusing situation, but I still don't see the principle behind Lou's objection to the original idea.

Original comment by: @martindholmes

[TEITechnicalCouncil]

While I think it is inappropriate to artificially reuse components of a structured object within a definitely unstructured one, I understand Martin's use case and I have to come to what I think is a nice solution: we allow bibl in bibl by making bibl member of model.biblPart and with the appropriate use of @type in the embedded bibl's, <bibl type="article" subtype="book_chapter" xml:id="carlin_2003"> <bibl type="analytic"> <author><name><surname>Carlin</surname> (<forename>Claire</forename>)</name></author>, <title level="a">The Staging of Impotence : France’s last <hi rend="italic">congrès</hi></title></bibl>

dans <bibl type="compendium"> <title level="m">Theatrum mundi : studies in honor of Ronald W. Tobin</title>, éd. <editor><name><forename>Claire</forename> <surname>Carlin</surname></name></editor> et <editor><name><forename>Kathleen</forename> <surname>Wine</surname></name></editor>, <pubPlace>Charlottesville, Va.</pubPlace>, <publisher>Rookwood Press</publisher>, <date when="2003">2003</date>. </bibl> </bibl>

Original comment by: @laurentromary

[TEITechnicalCouncil]

BTW. What I meant is that if we go the way you want, Martin, we would have to make analytic and monogr become mixed content which would create a mess for the management of really structured bibliography.

Original comment by: @laurentromary

[TEITechnicalCouncil]

I like Laurent's compromise: it provides the grouping functionality we need without complicating the situation for <biblStruct>. Can we make this the proposal, along with suitable updates the Guidelines?

Original comment by: @martindholmes

[TEITechnicalCouncil]

I've always liked the idea of allowing <bibl> inside <bibl>, so Laurent's proposal gets two firm thumbs-up from me.

(I'd also like a more elegant way to record the fact that a bibliographic reference is a shorter version of an item in my master bibliography, currently <bib><ptr target="#abc"/></bibl> [such as @ref on bibl], but I suspect this is a very different discussion.)

No to Lou's suggestion to resolve this by simply clarifying the existing guielines, therefore.

Original comment by: @gabrielbodard

[TEITechnicalCouncil]

I'm fine with Laurent's compromise as well.

Original comment by: @kshawkin

[TEITechnicalCouncil]

In principle, we all agree with Laurent's suggstion to "allow bibl in bibl by making bibl a member of model.biblPart and with the appropriate use of @type in the embedded bibl's."

This would be accompanied by an appropriate example and explanation in the guidelines. Gabriel B also agreed with this.

There is one unaddressed issue here: if we use nesting to describe relationships, do we nest logically (where the "analytic" bibl is a child of the "monogr" bibl, and the "monogr" bibl is a child of the "series" bibl), or do we nest in a way that mimicks <biblStruct> (where analytic, monogr and series are all siblings inside the container <biblStruct>? Personally, I think both are reasonable, and should be covered by the example. The first is a better approximation to reality, and the second follows current practice with <biblStruct>.

Here are three <bibl>s showing non-nested (current approach), nested-like-reality (analytic contained by monogr), and nested-like-biblStruct (analytic sibling of <biblStruct>):

<bibl type="article" subtype="magazine_article" xml:id="beaupaire_1911"> <author><name><surname>Beaupaire</surname> (<forename>Edmond</forename>)</name></author>, <title level="a">A propos de la rue de la Femme-sans-Tête</title>, <title level="j">La Cité</title>, <date when="1911-01">janvier 1911</date>, pp. <biblScope type="pages">5-17</biblScope> </bibl>

<bibl type="article" subtype="magazine_article" xml:id="beaupaire_1911"> <bibl type="monogr"> <bibl type="analytic"> <author><name><surname>Beaupaire</surname> (<forename>Edmond</forename>)</name></author>, <title level="a">A propos de la rue de la Femme-sans-Tête</title>, </bibl> <title level="j">La Cité</title>, <date when="1911-01">janvier 1911</date>, pp. <biblScope type="pages">5-17</biblScope> </bibl> </bibl>

<bibl type="article" subtype="magazine_article" xml:id="beaupaire_1911"> <bibl type="analytic"> <author><name><surname>Beaupaire</surname> (<forename>Edmond</forename>)</name></author>, <title level="a">A propos de la rue de la Femme-sans-Tête</title>, </bibl> <bibl type="monogr"> <title level="j">La Cité</title>, <date when="1911-01">janvier 1911</date>, pp. <biblScope type="pages">5-17</biblScope> </bibl> </bibl>

Original comment by: @martindholmes

[TEITechnicalCouncil]

Thanks for the examples. When Martin wrote "nested-like-biblStruct (analytic sibling of <biblStruct>", I think he meant "nested-like-biblStruct (analytic sibling of monogr)".

I don't see how "analytic contained by monogr" matches reality better than "analytic sibling of monogr". I think we're getting into the territory of text ontology (does the sentence end before the end of the blockquote? who knows?), so for consistency with biblStruct, it seems that that we should go with analytic sibling of monogr.

Original comment by: @kshawkin

[TEITechnicalCouncil]

Yes, I did mean "nested-like-biblStruct (analytic sibling of monogr)". Sorry!

By matching reality, I meant that (e.g.) chapters are contained by books, so chapter (analytic) bibls should be contained by book (monogr) bibls. This has always seemed logical to me. But it's an issue more for the guidelines and examples; we should decide which approach we're going to exemplify, but whatever we put in the guidelines, I'll still be free to model reality my way.

Original comment by: @martindholmes

[TEITechnicalCouncil]

Now I understand what Martin meant by reality; however, I don't think of metadata about the article as being a nested component of metadata about a journal issue. So I still prefer to do it like biblStruct.

Original comment by: @kshawkin

[TEITechnicalCouncil]

So here's our considered proposal:

Allow <bibl> and a child of <bibl> by making <bibl> a member of model.biblPart and with the appropriate use of @type in the embedded <bibl>s.

Suggested @type values would be "analytic", "monogr" and "series".

The following text should be added to the end of the Guidelines 3.11.2.1 Analytic, Monographic, and Series Levels:

The distinction between analytic, monographic and series components in a bibliographical record can be made in <bibl> as well as <biblStruct>, by using nested <bibl> elements, with their @type attribute set to "analytic", "monogr" or "series". This example shows a <bibl> for a magazine article with two component <bibl> elements, one for the article information (author and title), and one for the containing journal:

<bibl type="article" subtype="magazine_article" xml:id="beaupaire_1911"> <bibl type="analytic"> <author><name><surname>Beaupaire</surname> (<forename>Edmond</forename>)</name></author>, <title level="a">A propos de la rue de la Femme-sans-Tête</title>, </bibl> <bibl type="monogr"> <title level="j">La Cité</title>, <date when="1911-01">janvier 1911</date>, pp. <biblScope type="pages">5-17</biblScope> </bibl> </bibl>

Original comment by: @martindholmes

[TEITechnicalCouncil]

EDIT:

Allow <bibl> AS a child of <bibl>...

Original comment by: @martindholmes

[TEITechnicalCouncil]

The proposal to allow nested <bibl>s was approved by the Council. This is the action I propose to take (it'll be my first edit of the Guidelines, so please comment if you see anything I've missed or got wrong):

1. Add bibl to model.biblPart.

2. Add a good example to the bibl definition:

<bibl type="article" subtype="book_chapter" xml:id="carlin_2003"> <author><name><surname>Carlin</surname> (<forename>Claire</forename>)</name></author>, <title level="a">The Staging of Impotence : France’s last congrès</title> dans <bibl type="monogr"> <title level="m">Theatrum mundi : studies in honor of Ronald W. Tobin</title>, éd. <editor><name><forename>Claire</forename> <surname>Carlin</surname></name></editor> et <editor><name><forename>Kathleen</forename> <surname>Wine</surname></name></editor>, <pubPlace>Charlottesville, Va.</pubPlace>, <publisher>Rookwood Press</publisher>, <date when="2003">2003</date>. </bibl> </bibl>

3. Modify this part of the guidelines:

http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/CO.html\#COBICOL

from this:

"These three levels may be distinguished within a bibl element, and must be distinguished within a biblStruct element by means of the following elements: "

to this:

Within <bibl>, these three levels may be distinguished simply by the use of the @level attribute on <title>. They may also be distinguished through the practice of employing nested <bibl> elements. In this example, for instance, the monograph-level component of the reference is encapsulated in its own <bibl> within the main <bibl> for the article:

<bibl type="article" subtype="magazine_article" xml:id="beaupaire_1911"> <author><name><surname>Beaupaire</surname> (<forename>Edmond</forename>)</name></author>, <title level="a">A propos de la rue de la Femme-sans-Tête</title>, <bibl type="monogr"> <title level="j">La Cité</title>, <date when="1911-01">janvier 1911</date>, pp. <biblScope type="pages">5-17</biblScope>. </bibl> </bibl>

Within <biblStruct>, the levels must be distinguished by the use of the following elements: [etc.]

4. ??? Add one or more tests to check that the change has been effective and not broken anything else? Or will the validation of examples (they'll be @valid="feasible") suffice for that?

Original comment by: @martindholmes

[TEITechnicalCouncil]

These changes have been made and committed to SVN (revisions 8816 and 8817). Ticket now closed.

Original comment by: @martindholmes

[TEITechnicalCouncil]

• status: open --> closed

Original comment by: @martindholmes