[tei-council] addition of <availability>

[Fabio Ciotti]

> By the way, one question from a slight distance - Fabio is approaching this
> from the point of view of standard bibliographic practice. And perhaps
> biblStruct is meant to satisfy the more stringent needs of that kind of
> bibliographer as opposed to to the ordinary "these are the relevant books"
> type of use, for which <bibl> is adequate.

Well, I think that TEI must not necessarily follow bibliographic
practice, and in fact it doesn't (at least not in a consistent way).
Only, if we make changes I think it's relevant to look at other models
in the arena. And in a sense much of our bibliographic elements are
based on practices that are outdated even in that context.

> However - I would think of the audience as well when deciding where to put
> the <availability> element, and draw on bibliographic practice as an aid to
> decision making, and not just as rule. Does this make the most sense?

Yes, I agree but taking this approach to the extreme brings to dublin
core element set where there is no structure at all. Is not that I
don't like DC

> As noted before, I like the generalization of <availabiltiy> as a top level
> element, but wonder if it would be a problem for resources that are broken
> up and are available in different ways.
>
> As a side note - one of the things Tizra offers (David D.'s company) is a
> way for publishers to chop up longer works into chapters or articles and
> sell or license single ones to different audiences or at different prices.
> So that's a real life example of a book or proceedings whose constituent
> parts may have different availabilities.

Yes but in a bibliography based upon <bibStruct> you would have as
many <biblStruct> elements as single chapters you would list. That is
why I suggest to put <availability> at the top level. The property of
being available is a property of the chapters (or in general the item
you are describing inside <biblStruct>).
Anyway, we can stop the flame here, the solution to spread
<availability> works nicely, only, I'd rather not to put it into
<imprint> (and in fact it should be outside <publicationStmt> as well,
that Birnbaum forgive me...)

f