Building a bibliographic hierarchy for manga through the aggregation of institutional and hobbyist descriptions
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-06-2018-0089 |
| Date | 06 March 2019 |
| Pages | 287-313 |
| Published date | 06 March 2019 |
| Author | Senan Kiryakos,Shigeo Sugimoto |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
Building a bibliographic hierarchy
for manga through the
aggregation of institutional and
hobbyist descriptions
Senan Kiryakos and Shigeo Sugimoto
University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan
Abstract
Purpose –Multiple studies have illustrated that the needs of various users seeking descriptive bibliographic
data for pop culture resources (e.g. manga, anime, video games) have not been properly met by cultural
heritage institutions and traditional models. With a focus on manga as the central resource, the purpose of
this paper is to address these issues to better meet user needs.
Design/methodology/approach –Based on an analysis of existing bibliographic metadata, this paper
proposes a unique bibliographic hierarchy for manga that is also extendable to other pop culture sources. To
better meet user requirements of descriptive data, an aggregation-based approach relying on the Object Reuse
and Exchange-Open Archives Initiative (OAI-ORE) model utilized existing, fan-created data on the web.
Findings –The proposed hierarchy is better able to portray multiple entities of manga as they exist across
data providers compared to existing models, while the utilization of OAI-ORE-based aggregation to build and
provide bibliographic metadata for said hierarchy resulted in levels of description that more adequately meet
user demands.
Originality/value –Though studies have proposed alternative models for resources like games or comics,
manga has remained unexamined. As manga is a major component of many popular multimedia franchises, a
focus here with the intention while building the model to support other resource types provides a foundation
for future work seeking to incorporate these resources.
Keywords FRBR, Knowledge organizations, Transmedia, Bibliographic families,
Bibliographic hierarchies, Manga, Metadata aggregation, OAI-ORE, Superwork
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
In some ways a standardbibliographic resource,manga –a form of J apanese comic –beinga
product of popular culture (pop culture) and a part of large multimedia franchises means it
faces unique challenges when compared to more traditional bibliographic objects. Much like
other related pop culture resources, e.g. video games, Japanese animation (anime), manga has
traditionally been treated as a resource unworthy of sincere effort by cultural heritage
institutionsregarding how they collect, record and preserve manga and itsbibliographic data.
Reasons for this include that ILS professionals may have limited knowledge of the fan
informationor sub-cultures thatthese mediums have givenrise to (Hart et al., 1999, p. 88), thus,
not recognizing their significance outside of these communities, or, for academic libraries,
factors suchas budgetary constraintslimiting the collectionsof fictional works to thosewith a
higher cultural significance (Slater and Kardos, 2017, p. 116). For fans of the medium, this has
resulted in an unsatisfactory bibliographic landscape and an audience with needs that have
remained unmet. Recently, however, the societalimpact and acceptance of variouspop culture
resources has been growing, and previously niche industries, such as anime, videogames,
manga and comics currently account for billions of dollars in annual consumer spending
(Asahi Shimbun, 2017; Entertainment Software Association, 2016; Pineda, 2017; Reid, 2016). Journal of Documentation
Vol. 75 No. 2, 2019
pp. 287-313
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-06-2018-0089
Received 8 June 2018
Revised 30 August 2018
Accepted 3 September 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0022-0418.htm
This research, throughout the study process, was funded in part by JSPS KAKENHI Grant
No. 16H01754.
287
Bibliographic
hierarchy for
manga
The cultural significance of these resources has also come to be better understood, and
resources such as comic books have seen a recent surge in interest from researchers in the
humanities (Kashton, 2011; Whitson and Salter, 2015). Though memory institutions have
become more interested in better representing these resources for the benefit of their users,
factors such as limited staff resources,small on-hand collections and restrictive bibliographic
description models have limited how effective these institutions have been at describing
manga in a way that adequately meets the needs of users. Thus, bibliographic records for
some pop culture resources contain adequatedata of the type found in authority files, suchas
titles and creators, but contain data of limited granularity and relevance in other areas like
subjects or genres and visual styles –areas which are of the most interest to fans of these
resources (Fee, 2013) and important access points for search and retrieval (Lee et al., 2013).
In response, collectors and hobbyists have takenthe initiative to create theirown data on the
web that better meetstheir information needs. Though lacking the formal modeling and data
consistencyof traditional authorities, informationheld by hobbyist providerscontain a level of
granularity not found elsewhere. At the very least, an examination of how fans of mediums
largely absentfrom libraries classify,organize and describe materialsthemselves may provide
furtherinsight into understandingand considering user warrantand user-driven classification
design (see Bullard, 2016, 2017).
The differences between traditional institutional data and fan-created web data differ not
only in their level of descriptive granularity, but also in the focus of their descriptions. Using
the FRBR Group 1 Work, Expression Manifestation, and Item (WEMI) entities as an
analogue, these descriptions for the same manga resource vary between the Work and Item
level; fan-created data tend to align closer to the Work, while institutional data are typically
Manifestation or Item oriented. In simple terms, fan-created descriptions are concerned with
the content, while institutional descriptions are concerned with the carrier. This has resulted
in a wealth of bibliographic description existing for manga, though the data are described as
across multiple bibliographic entities and are dispersed among numerous distinct,
unconnected data providers.
Based on these facts, the research presented here is an investigation on how to structure
and describe bibliographic descriptions for manga and related resources to better meet the
needs of users. To achieve this, the following goals have been set as the guiding concepts for
our research:
(1) An analysis of existing bibliographic descriptions for manga reveals that while the
different data providers treat manga as different bibliographic entities, these entities
do not fully align with existing bibliographic entity models, i.e. FRBR. Thus, our
research sought to define a bibliographic model consisting of entities more adequate
at describing manga data for the benefit of users, which resulted in the creation of a
set of three core entities capable of representing all descriptive data for manga on the
web. Like FRBR, these entities were connected to form a bibliographic hierarchy
that describes manga as entities ranging from the conceptual franchise to the single
published object. In addition, the model and entities were created with the ability to
easily include data from other related pop culture materials that we anticipate
utilizing in future work, such as videogames and animation.
(2) The desire to bring together unconnected bibliographic descriptions for manga, and
in particular better utilize existing fan-created descriptive data on the web, led to an
investigation of metadata aggregation models suitable of creating aggregated
entities based on existing web resources. The Object Reuse and Exchange-Open
Archives Initiative (OAI-ORE) was chosen because of its ability to perform this task.
Our research used the OAI-ORE model as a basis for creating our bibliographic
entities and providing the descriptive metadata that they contain. The ability to use
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