[mei-catalog-ig] Report from the MEI metadata IG's meeting in Vienna

[Axel Teich Geertinger]

Dear Metadata and Cataloging IG

Our group convened last Saturday at the MEC 2019 in Vienna. We mainly discussed the changes in MEI 4 as compared to MEI 3, and I'll try outlining our discussions below.

Guidelines
The metadata chapter in the guidelines is now updated to reflect MEI 4, but there is still work to do:

  *   The new role of the <source> element, restricting it to references to sources used for the creation of the file, will need some explanation in the guidelines to distinguish more clearly which sources should be mentioned in <sourceDesc>. There was some uncertainty as to what qualifies a source to be classified as ”used in the creation of the electronic file”.
  *   As for now, the description of the new <manifestation> element is placed according to its position in the header, not as part of the FRBR-specific chapter 3.2. I have done so because <manifestation> has taken over the <source> element's role as the place for detailed source descriptions, but this makes the whole structure of the metadata chapter somewhat inconsistent, so we might consider rearranging it.
  *   The details of source descriptions (now in <manifestation>) are not covered at all yet, let alone the new elements available with the msDesc module.
  *   Sections 3.1.2.5 on class declarations and 3.1.3.12 on classification probably need reworking. We had some discussion about the new taxonomy and classification model and arrived at the assumption that existing taxonomies such as the Library of Congress’ list of subjects or the Dewey classification should probably not be declared at all in <classDecls> and hence only be referecend to with full (external) URLs in @class attributes. It may need further clarification and some good examples in the guidelines (see also the github discussion prior to the implementation here: https://github.com/music-encoding/music-encoding/issues/430).
Any help with the guidelines is highly appreciated.

Schema issues

  *   In <work> and <expression>, there is no longer a <titlStmt> element an therefore no <respStmt> either for encoding information about all persons responsible for the creation of the work (or expression). The new <contributor> element is defined even narrower than general ”responsibility”, allowing only ”Names of individuals, institutions, or organizations responsible for contributions to the intellectual content of a work, where the specialized elements for authors, editors, etc. do not suffice or do not apply.” So, there is currently no place for the names of other agents such as commissioners or dedicatees.
  *   Not new in MEI 4, but the counting of instruments/players/parts has been a recurring issue and still needs clarification. According to the specs, the @count attribute counts the number of performers. This is problematic in many cases. Often the number of actual players is unkown or may have varied according to local resources, and there is no way of telling how many players have been playing from the same physical part, or how many/few percussionists were intended to play all the percussion instruments notated in an opera score. In some cases, counting the different logical parts will be more relevant. Also the encoding of alternating or doubling instruments could be more intuitively understandable than the example given in the guidelines’ section 3.1.3.7.2 (5th example).

Other things to discuss
The role of the header in the upcoming MEI Basic schema has not yet been discussed: What type or interchangeability is intended regarding the header? Conversion to other notation formats or other metadata formats? Recommendations from the group as to the contents and structure of the header in MEI Basic requires at least a clarification (to be discussed on MEI-L or otherwise with the rest of the community).

Organizational
We preliminarily scheduled a Metadata IG meeting to be held at the Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen around 3–5 October 2019. I would be happy to know as soon as possible how many of you would be able to attend to see whether setting up such a meeting would be useful.

Convenors of this group are now Kristina Richts and Margrethe Bue, so this is likely to be the last mail from me as a co-convenor.

Best wishes,

Axel Teich Geertinger
Centerleder
Head of Centre

Dansk Center for Musikudgivelse
Danish Centre for Music Editing

+45 9132 4706
atge at kb.dk<mailto:atge at kb.dk>

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Det Kgl. Bibliotek
Royal Danish Library

Søren Kierkegaards Plads 1
DK-1221 København K
+45 3347 4747

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