aloe, dream

In pondering the existence of various media forms (mainly of entertainment), there comes a thought of The Conceptual Library.

Contrary to WorldCat, a conceptual library is one of intangibles, though such existence is truly real. An item within such a cataloged system may not be indexed by a physical or non-intrinsic label. These items exists only in the aether, such places as the Internet.

While it may seem whimsical to identify this place, we are in a most positive sense, dealing with a conceptual library on a daily basis. Formless existence which provide an experience. In the most basic relation, these works are the physically non-instantiated contents of what manifests from factories and publishing presses.

Are we dancing yet?

The most apparent form of instantiating an item of concept would have to be the ISBN. It is with the ISBN we can catalog physical ownership or experience of works, but in our current go, what is the usefulness when most of what we may experience has no ISBN? Furthermore, in what way do we catalog an experience, when a single entity has multiple ISBNs?

Clearly, almost every system for cataloging experience does not rely such things as ISBN or re-issues. The existence of a film in Blu-Ray or VHS is inconsequential to the experience; quality of experience, perhaps.

While both libraries have uses, I generally feel the one less physically manifested is the more useful, though in many cases this would be false, why is that? Simply, not everything exists on the Internet, and for many items, an international cataloging number is the best way to locate them (through libraries).

Yet, for experience. I cannot say cataloging by physical items would be very useful. For example, a given anime series is not “as a whole” in reality. It is broken into multiple DVD sections, in which the physical index exists for each DVD. If one wished to express about a series as a whole, ISBN would be fairly useless, for it distinguishes between parts of a greater entity, which should be indistinguishable.

And so we have our conceptual libraries. Though, however unfortunate it may be, the physical libraries win in one major area, standardized semantic representation. A given library understands the contents of another library, usually through ISBN. As for the libraries we use for this type of entertainment, I don’t see that sort of understanding between them.

ANN doesn’t understand what exists on AniDB, nor especially BakaUpdates. The same can be said for nearly any site dealing with a specific entertainment form.

Bubbles exist.