Karen Coyle has written a post on Coyle’s InFormation that I feel greatly helps to explain why it can be so complex to structure bibliographic information.
I first encountered Entity-Relationships (note: right now this link is not a great introduction to the concept, but provides some good examples) when learning to create queries and reports from a Voyager database. It was intimidating, to say the least, but was one of several steps that proved to be extremely helpful.
The diagrams, for whatever they represent, usually mirror the complexity of the system they represent. They oftentimes are the most effective way to show this.
Understanding this complexity in bibliographic structure is important, I feel, because it allows us library types to better evaluate the tools that we use and select. An OPAC search screen, or an ILS module, or any program we use is more useful when its structure better fits the entity-relationship that already exists for our materials. A spreadsheet is great for certain types of information and presentation; a word processor for others. A program that doesn’t fit the structure so well tends to be “clunky” to use in that context.
Read her post. Repeat as necessary. Don’t feel that you need to memorize the detail, or be able to re-create her diagrams. Simply get the gist of what she has put into words and pictures, and know that it will help you in your daily work, and in your understanding of how things work.
