# Voyages in URCland

Terry Allen (terry@ora.com)
Tue, 26 Apr 1994 15:50:25 PDT

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    Message-Id: <199404262250.PAA11970@rock>

    From: Terry Allen <terry@ora.com>

    Date: Tue, 26 Apr 1994 15:50:25 PDT

    To: uri@bunyip.com

    Subject: Voyages in URCland

Dirk asks me to post an example I gave that relates to collections
and multiple publishers. This could be a real Internet example
as soon as rare book rooms start putting their info online (as
the Vatican Library has announced it will do with MSS).

This is mostly just for fun, but it does point out that most publishers
go away after awhile, and one cannot depend on querying them for
resolving URNs; the following info was assembled by librarians, and
obtained from Gladis and Melvyl, the UCB and UC system on-line
library catalogues, along with a physical copy of pt 1 in English,
which I bought in trade (I sell used books about the Islamic world
on the side); I've trimmed the bibliographic details from the
citations.

Jean Chardin was a French jeweller who made several trips
to Persia, residing at the Safavid court in Isfahan. When
he retired he wrote up his travels in 4 parts, in French.

First, Moses Pitt, London, published pt 1 in French:

Call #: f DS257.C42 J6 1686 Bancroft
Author: Chardin, John, Sir, 1643-1713.
Title: Journal du voyage du chevalier Chardin en Perse & aux
Indes Orientales, par la Mer Noire & par la Colchide.
Premiere partie, qui contient le voyage de Paris a
Ispahan.
A Londres, Chez Moses Pitt, 1686.
Contents: 1. pt. Le voyage de Paris a Ispahan.
No more published in this edition.

Chardin supervised the translation of this volume into English,
and it was also published by Pitt, and in the same year. (Chardin
complains in the preface about the defects of the translation,
typesetting, and engraving of the plates, which he says will
be engraved all by the same hand in any future edition):

Call #: f DS257.C42 J63 1686 Bancroft
Author: Chardin, John, Sir, 1643-1713.
Title: The travels of Sir John Chardin into Persia and the East
Indies. The first volume, containing the author's
voyage from Paris to Ispahan. To which is added, The
coronation of this present king of Persia, Solyman the
Third.
London, Printed for M. Pitt, 1686.
No more published.

The 3 remaining parts were published separately in French
in Amsterdam in 1711 and in English in London, 1720:

Call #: DS257 .C63 Bancroft
Author: Chardin, John, Sir, 1643-1713.
Title: Voyages de monsieur le chevalier Chardin, en Perse, et
autres lieux de l'Orient ; tome premier[-troisieme] ..
A Amsterdam : Chez Jean Louis de Lorme, 1711.
3 v. : ill. ; 25cm. (4to).
Contents: t.1. Voyage de Paris a Ispahan, capitale de l'Empire de
Perse -- t.2. Description generale de l'Empire de
Perse -- t.3. Description particuliere de la ville
d'Ispahan, capitale de Perse.
Call #: DS257 .C6 Main Stack
Author: Chardin, John, Sir, 1643-1713.
Title: Sir John Chardin's travels in Persia / never before
translated into English ... [in eight] volumes by Edm.
Lloyd.
London : Printed for the author, and sold by J. Smith,
1720.
2 v. [TA: that is, 8v in 2]
A translation of parts of v. 3-4 of "Voyages en Perse,"
Notes: (cont'd) Amsterdam, 1711. Published later as "A new
collection of voyages and travels" 1721, and "A new
and accurate description of Persia" 1724.

And, to cut a long story short, the full 4v first appeared as a set
in English in 1811 (I haven't kept track of the first publication of
all four parts in French) as part of a collection by Pinkerton:

Call #: x G161 .P65 v.9 Bancroft
Author: Chardin, John, Sir, 1643-1713.
Title: The travels of Sir John Chardin, by the way of the Black
Sea, through the countries of Circassia, Mingrelia,
the country of the Abcas; Georgia, Armenia, and Media,
into Persia proper ...
Contained in: Pinkerton, John, 1758-1826. A general collection of the
best and most interesting voyages and travels in all
parts of the world. London, 1808-14. 28 cm. v. 9
(1811).

And the modern critical edition in English is this:

Call #: DS257 .C5 1927 Moffitt
DS257.C42 J63 1927 Bancroft
DS257 .C6 1927 Main Stack
Author: Chardin, John, Sir, 1643-1713.
Title: Sir John Chardin's Travels in Persia, with an
introduction by Brigadier-General Sir Percy Sykes ...
London, The Argonaut press, 1927.

Now, if I'm a freshman writing a history paper on the French in Iran, I
might want "any English edition." If I'm a beginning graduate student who
can read French, I might want "the earliest French edition available within
48hrs and below my wallet's pain threshold." If I'm writing a dissertation
on the subject, I might prefer "the earliest edition of any part in
the native language of the author."

I might start with a URN identifying any of the works cited above, plus
about a dozen other editions, down to an abridged French version
published in Paris in 1965. I ought to be able to use that
obtain the info I need to match up against my preferences, then
URNs and URLs, which is pretty much what I did with Gladis and Melvyl.

I don't think much needs to be added to Michael Mealling's list:

>Size
>Content Type
>Cost
>Title
>Author
>Version

to which Dirk adds date and language. I think publisher and perhaps
place may be required (although publisher may be deduced from some
URNs, other URNs will be assigned by third parties, such as libraries).

I agree with the tenor of the discussion, that a full bibliographic
record ("something like a MARC record") may not be needed as a practical
matter for URN>URL resolution, though it seems to me that representing
it all is a part of the same problem. Is this where various kinds
of URCs could be useful (URCs for "more meta than you will ever want"
and URCs for "just enough meta to be useful")?

Or is "more meta than you will ever want" something beyond a URC?

    --
    Terry Allen  (terry@ora.com)
    Editor, Digital Media Group
    O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
    Sebastopol, Calif., 95472

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