MAPP Works Content Type

MAPP’s data model begins with an assumption that a ‘book’ is not a single object, but is the product of a network of people, businesses, material artifacts, and words. Unlike a library catalog, where all the editions of a work are typically listed under the same heading, MAPP connects multiple editions and physical copies of a work, but does so in a way that distinguishes among them.

Our data model thus separates a book into three parts: a Work, an Edition, and a Primary Object. ‘Work’ is equivalent to what literary critics often call a ‘text,’ the words alone of the canonical printed edition divorced from the social, economic, or material contexts. In making these distinctions, we have closely followed the Functional Requirements of Bibliographic Records (FRBR) metadata standard, albeit with slightly different terminology that is more familiar to book historians. FRBR defines these entities thus:
the work, a distinct intellectual or artistic creation
the expression, the intellectual or artistic realization of a work
the manifestation, the physical embodiment of an expression of a work
the item, a single exemplar of a manifestation. (OCLC Research, 2016)