8.4 What information should be included in my record? In 1988, at their Annual Conference in Vienna, the International Association of Sound Archives Discography/Cataloguing Working Group presented their recommended list of data elements required for describing recorded sound events.
IASA recommended list of data elements for cataloguing sound recordings Title
Programme Title
Series Title
Uniform Title
Names (incl. types of 'functions' related to those names)
- Composer
- Author
- Librettist
- Artist
- Orchestra
Medium of performance (e.g. Violin)
Name of Broadcasting Service/Station
- Name of Broadcaster
Other information related to names:
Voice (e.g. Soprano)
- Character/Role (e.g. Aida)
Contents listing (e.g. list of track on an LP)
Summary (e.g. Synopsis of text/interview)
Language
Label
Catalogue Number
Matrix Number
Shelf Location
Location of other copies
Physical Description
- Format (e.g. disc, tape, etc)
- Speed
- Size
- Mono/Stereo
- Analogue (recording)
- Digital (recording
- Analogue (mix)
- Digital (mix)
- Analogue (replay)
- Digital (replay)
Duration
Technical Quality
- Sound quality
- Physical Condition
Place of Recording
Recording Date
Broadcast Date (first date of broadcast)
Copyright holder
Embargo
Copyright
Royalties
Obligations accruing from acquiring the recording
Date of Entry
Name of Person who entered the entry to the system
Although these data elements are intended primarily for analogue resources, the information your users need to access and understand your data resources will be similar. (It should be noted that these fields are not intended to be mandatory and that the words "if applicable", "if readily available" and "as appropriate" follow many of the data elements in the list). 8.5 Understanding the status of your metadata record - what are you describing? Now you have an idea of the kind of information that users may need, but in order to develop an appropriate structure for your metadata it is important to identify the concepts, items and events that you wish to document. This can be a complex procedure, as it is often intimately bound up with the way that you and your users understand the meaning and relationships between a performance and its many manifestations. Just as a metadata record can be seen as a surrogate for a digital object - providing information about the intellectual content of a resource - so the object that you are documenting is also likely to be a surrogate. Listening to a recording of a concert can be seen as a surrogate for the experience of attending that concert, for example. Your recording may be one of several clips from a single piece of music or oral history interview and should be approached as part of a sequence. The relationship between each object, and to any parent object, should therefore also be documented. The Digital Music Library Initiative at Indiana University (http://www.dml.indiana.edu/metadata/) has identified five primary categories of information for music resources that may provide a useful structure for creating and linking metadata records that document different, but related, concepts: Work
A musical Work is an abstract thing; it should not be confused with a performance, recording, score, or otherwise physical Instantiation of that Work. Beethoven's 5th Symphony is a musical Work, and we would associate with it a composer, composition date, and other data pertaining to the Work itself. Collective Work
Collective Works bring together multiple Works that share some information in common. The Brandenburg concerti are an example of a Collective Work-while they were not written as a unit, they were collected together as a unit. Likewise, Beethoven's nine symphonies could be viewed as a collection of musical Works. Instantiations
An instantiation is a manifestation of a Work. A recording of Beethoven's 5th Symphony is an Instance of that Work, as is a musical score of the same Work. Containers
Instances of a Work must be brought together somewhere; CDs, LPs, anthologies of scores, and other similar physical entities are Containers. A CD contains on it (potentially) many Instances of many different Works (a typical CD of pop music); similarly, it may contain only one or part of one Instance of a very long Work (as is the case with many operas). Name
Composers, performers, choirs, quartets-all of these individuals and groups that contribute to the making of a Work, Instance, or Container are represented by a Name record. Each of these record types is capable of supporting links to other records, sometimes of the same type, sometimes of differing types. For example, a Work record might link to a Name record belonging to the composer of that Work. A similar set of record types may also be identified for recordings of theatrical performances, oral history interviews, and other recordings.
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