6.2 Boundaries between Works and Variants

This section looks at instances of when an entity constitutes a new Work or a Variant of a Work.

Determining boundaries between Works and Variants may sometimes rely upon a cataloguer’s judgment, however, in general: If much of the original textual material remains, most of the original footage remains in roughly the same continuity, however abridged, and substantially most of the contributors are the same, the existence of alterations more often than not constitute a Variant, rather than a new Work. An institution will need to set internal policies defining the minimum percentage of a work that has been extensively edited to qualify it as a new Work.

This decision tree is intended to help cataloguers determine when changes in content warrant the creation of a new Work record or a new Variant record. This distinction applies to cataloguing structures using a 4-level hierarchy: Work, Variant, Manifestation, and Item. When using a 3-level hierarchy - Work, Manifestation, and Item – minor changes will indicate new Manifestations rather than new Variants. In all cases, major changes warrant the creation of new Work records.