Metadata for Transmedia Resources. By Ana Vukadin. Cambridge, MA: Elsevier, Chandos, 2019. 186 pages. $78.95 softcover (ISBN 978-0-08-101293-2).

From the moment that author Ana Vukadin invokes the memory of small-town murder victim Laura Palmer on page one of Metadata for Transmedia Resources, the reader is transported into a world of intertextuality, transfictionality, and various fictional worlds that seem stranger and yet just as familiar as Twin Peaks. Using liberal amounts of examples from popular culture and literary canons—from J. K. Rowling’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter to the Wachowskis’ Matrix—Vukadin goes down the veritable rabbit hole of transmedia resources, explains why transmedia resources matter increasingly to libraries, and outlines best practices in describing and organizing the metadata for transmedia resources. Resplendent with modeling examples and illustrations from fictional worlds, the subtle differences in and complexity of transmedia resources becomes clear.

Vukadin writes, “Transmedia is relatively easily identified, but not so easily defined” (21). Transmedia resources use various communication platforms such as graphic novels, board games, television, film, and literary works, to deliver parts of a single conceptual whole in innumerable ways. Skipping from historical examples predating the digital realm (e.g., Richard Wagner) to the most recent alternate, augmented, and/or virtual realities, transmedia combines delivery forms with various types of bibliographic relationships, making complex networks and graphs of metadata. Although the scope, structure, and content in fictional worlds might vary across delivery method, focusing on transmedia resources and storytelling commonly encountered in library collections allows for an intimate portrait. Chapter 2 describes the compositional structure (intercompositional versus intracompositional) of transmedia, defines transfictionality, and what transmedia is not. So often, we inhabit these fictional worlds as readers and media consumers without fully appreciating their underpinnings. Vukadin discusses the topos (specific time and place), mythos (lore of a fictional world), and ethos (set of ideas, beliefs and behaviors) that surround the developing narrative.

Chapter 3, titled “Why organize information about transmedia?,” reminds us gently that an era of ever more complex and richly diverse media coexists in a time where library resources and finances are limited. However, Vukadin draws media literacy, information literacy, and transmedia literacy together with the library catalog and bibliographic metadata’s tasks of helping teachers effectively choose instructional resources and developing children’s narrative skills and how to navigate and analyze information. Ongoing cataloging trends in automation, crowdsourcing, and reusing information from knowledge domains are all partial solutions to this resource intensive transmedia description.

After readers are introduced to transmedia resources and another chapter justifies why the organization of transmedia resources is important for libraries, the following is addressed: How DO we organize information about transmedia? Vukadin used the International Federation of Library Associations Library Reference Model (IFLA LRM) to great effect by using the Work, Expression, Manifestation, and Item (WEMI) stack.1 Beginning with the development of the FR-Family (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records, Authority Data, and Subject Authority Data, respectively), FRBRoo (the FR-Family expressed in object-oriented framework),2 and the eventual harmonization with CIDOC CRM,3 the author discusses recent developments in current cataloging and metadata thought. Transmedia resources use the eleven bibliographic entities defined in IFLA LRM, noting that “transmedia resources are not the main reason behind this paradigm shift, but might greatly benefit from it” (113) as this “analytical structure is essential for machine-reasoning applications that are envisaged to increasingly provide services for end-users” (117). Finally, Vukadin ends with a series of recommendations for bibliographic modeling of transmedia: (1) a recommendation for fully adopting the WEMI structure as a way of establishing transfictional relationships; (2) a recommendation for paying more attention to work and expressional-level information with emphasis on work-to-work relationships and subject relationships; (3) a recommendation for organizing intercompositional transmedia without over-structuring with super works; (4) a recommendation to include metadata for “ofness” as well as “aboutness,” especially for increased discoverability of fictional library resources; (5) a recommendation for how to model ephemeral media forms; and concludes with a recommendation to implement the IFLA LRM re-scoping of agents to real-life beings.

Catalogers, metadata wranglers, librarians, and/or library data workers interested in clear and practical examples of IFLA LRM concepts such as bibliographic families, advice on modeling super works, understanding diachronic works, representative expressions, meta-works, and complex works, should read this book. This book gives invaluable IFLA LRM modeling advice for complex situations. Vukadin has written an engrossing, thoughtful, and engaging read. This reviewer found herself particularly enjoying the sections on the authoritative cannon versus fan fiction. In reviewing this work, this reviewer had to stop and remind herself to enjoy it a little less while spending a bit more time contemplating the large potential that our current paradigm shift in description practices holds for us, our users, and our immediate metadata futures. In particular, the sections on modeling events and ephemeral media forms are thought provoking and fill an ontological gap. Although the modeling examples therein focus exclusively on transmedia resources, one can see how general cataloging can also benefit from the recommendations. With a firm footing in a wide swath of bibliographic practice and theory often quoting industry heavy-hitters, such as Cutter, Svenonius, Lubetzky, Coyle, Tillet, Dunsire, and Gorman, this work lays out a canvas of our bibliographic history and builds up a picture of the future. The book Metadata for Transmedia Resources closes on a substantial list of recommendations and strategies for libraries to implement.—Kalan Knudson Davis (kkdavis@umn.edu), University of Minnesota

References

1. Pat Riva, Patrick Le Bœuf, and Maja Žumer, “IFLA Library Reference Model: A Conceptual Model for Bibliographic Information,” International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, August 13, 2019, https://www.ifla.org/publications/node/11412.
2. Chryssoula Bekiari et al., “Definition of FRBRoo: A Conceptual Model for Bibliographic Information in Object-Oriented Formalism,” International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, Version 2.4, November 2015, www.ifla.org/files/assets/cataloguing/FRBRoo/frbroo_v_2.4.pdf.
3. “CIDOC CRM 6.2.7: Definition of the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model,” ICOM/CRM Special Interest Group, October 2019, http://www.cidoc-crm.org/Version/version-6.2.7.