ALEG
Weekly Report - Week 36, 5 January 2001
What I've done
- Worked exclusively on the works/expressions/manifestations user interface.
The user interface is largely now done and workable, although lots of
little things aren't working yet, and some big things (such as actually
storing what has been entered in the database!), but there haven't been
any huge hurdles, just lots and lots of little ones.
A large job was the restructuring of the file which describes the
contents of the user interface. This file contains "instructions" to
the program which runs in the web browser to build the form used to
edit the work/expression/manifestation. The previous structure worked
well with the agent - it is relatively simple, with birth and death
events and relationships with pseuds. However, with works things
are much more complicated. Following the FRBR/Indecs models (as we
are), we have a deep structure in the data:
- Work
- Creation (Event)
- Realisation(s) (Event)
- Expression
- Embodiment(s) (Event)
- Manifestation
- Contains part of relationship(s) (optional)
- Contained within relationship(s) (optional)
plus the review-of/reviewed-by relationships, topics, etc
Revealing this complexity on the form, tempting as it maybe, makes the
form unusable, so levels must be collapsed (and re-expanded).
- Discussions on use of diacritics and formatting of search results
What I haven't done but need to do soon!
- Document how ALEG will handle some tricky cases - The "Poets of the
Month" works from the mid 1970's and "Down the Lake with Half a Chook".
These are amongst the most "difficult" cases Tessa and Kathy can
come up with, so if we think the proposed data model can handle these,
we'll be happy!
Next week
- Continue implementation of the work/expression/manifestation maintenance interface.
- Put in place a temporary topic selection mechanism - soon topics will be in a hierarchy,
but they aren't yet (pending new thesaurus structure).
- Convert the author/title as subject data, currently just stored as text (it needs
to be made 'live')
- Kerry has sent me the WA, LAW and BAL datasets ready for loading.
- Start implementation of the search result changes discussed this week.
Summary
- OK. This week's most nagging worry is related to how the attributes/events of works
are inherited by expressions, and how those of expressions are inherited by manifestations.
The work user interface allows selection of expressions and manifestations, not just
works. But most of the time, expressions and manifestations don't have their own
attributes (eg, author, date), sometimes they do. When searching for an expression,
I'm sure you'll want to enter the title of the work or the expression, and I'm
struggling to implement this efficiently....
Links of the week