FRBR

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FRBR
the Mystery Explained!

• Glenn Patton, Director, WorldCat Quality
  Management, OCLC
• New Jersey Library Association Annual Conference
• April 12, 2005

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What is F R B R?

• Functional
• Requirements for
• Bibliographic
• Records
• IFLA Study Group on the Functional Requirements
  for Bibliographic Records, 1998.

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What Prompted F R B R?

• What information is of the most value to users of
  the catalog?
• How can that most valuable information be used
  more effectively?

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What FRBR Is Isnt?

• It isnt a standard
• So, its not something to implement
• Its a conceptual model
• It helps us think about current standards and
  practices
• Its a tool
• It clarifies how catalogs should function

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Four User Tasks

• Find
• Identify
• Select
• Obtain
• And, maybe a fifth
• Navigate

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Group 1 Bibliographic Entities

• Work
• A distinct intellectual or artistic creation
• Expression
• The intellectual or artistic realization of a
  work
• Manifestation
• The physical embodiment of an expression of a
  work
• Item
• A single example of a manifestation

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Work
is realized through
Expression
is embodied in

Manifestation
recursive
is exemplified by
one
Item
many
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Group 2 Responsible Entities

• Person
• Corporate Body
• And perhaps a third
• Family

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Group 3 Subject Entities

• Concept
• Object
• Event
• Place
• Plus the Group 1 and 2 Entities

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Attributes

• A set of characteristics that serve as the basis
  for formulating queries and interpreting
  responses
• Can be either inherent or externally applied

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Attributes of Group 1 Entities

• Work
• Work title, form or genre, date, performance
  medium, intended audience
• Expression
• Expression title, form of the expression,
  language of the expression, type of score, scale
  of a map

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Attributes of Group 1 Entities

• Manifestation
• Manifestation title, publisher, date of
  publication, form of carrier, dimensions,
  manifestation identifier (e.g. ISBN), terms of
  availability
• Item
• Location or call number, barcode, provenance,
  condition, access restrictions on an item

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Attributes of Group 2 Entities

• Person
• Names, dates, titles or other designations
• Corporate body
• Name, number, place, date, other designation

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Attributes of Group 3 Entities

• Concept, Object, Event, Place
• Only attribute is the term for the concept,
  object, event or place

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Relationships

• Link entities to one another
• Entities of different groups (person and work)
• Entities of the same group (work and expression
• Collocation and navigation

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Relationships(between different groups)

• Work ? Person
• Expression ? Person
• Manifestation ? Corporate body
• Item ? Corporate body
• Concept ? Work

• Created by
• Translated by
• Produced by
• Owned by
• Is subject of

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Relationships(within a group)

• Work to work
• Successor
• Supplement
• Complement
• Summarization
• Adaptation
• Transformation
• Imitation

• Work to work
• Whole/part

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But Why Do I Care?
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When Card Catalogs Ruled the World

• Filing rules
• Filing titles
• Cross-references
• Guide cards

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Objectives of Catalogs

• Cutters Objectives for the Catalog (1876)
• Finding
• Collocating
• Paris Principles (1961)
• Finding
• Collocating
• New draft International Principles
• http//www.ddb.de/news/pdf/statement_draft.pdf

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What FRBR Can Do for You

• Clearer understanding of why we do what we do

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Shifting to Online Catalogs

• Lots of gains
• Keyword searching
• Access to more of the bibliographic record
• Integrated authority control
• but some losses
• Collocation
• Navigation

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What FRBR Can Do for You

• Clearer understanding of why we do what we do
• Better collocation and navigation

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Relationships

• The FRBR model is revolutionary. The (computer)
  catalogue is not seen as a sequence of
  bibliographic records and a replica of the
  traditional card catalogue, but rather as a
  network of connected data, enabling the user to
  perform seamlessly all the necessary functions.

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Making Relationships

• Uniform titles
• Not consistently applied over time
• Not consistently applied to all materials
• Role and function identifiers
• Not consistently applied
• Buried in natural language

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What FRBR Can Do for You

• Clearer understanding of why we do what we do
• Better collocation and navigation
• Clearer, more useful relationships

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Scenario A - Now
Authority
Bibliographic
Item
Holding
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Scenario B
Authority
Person
Series (work/expression) Uniform Title
Work/ Expression Uniform Title
Concept
Manifestation
Bibliographic
Item
Holding
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What FRBR Can Do for You

• Clearer understanding of why we do what we do
• Better collocation and navigation
• Clearer, more useful relationships
• More controlled, authoritative information for
  productivity

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How to find F R B R

• On the web
• lt http//www.ifla.org/VII/s13/frbr/frbr.htm gt
• In paper
• Functional requirements for bibliographic records
  final report / IFLA Study Group on the
  Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records
  Approved by the Standing Committee of the IFLA
  Section on Cataloguing. Münich K.G. Saur,
  1998.
• viii, 136 pages.
• ISBN 3-598-11382-X

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More Information

• IFLA FRBR Review Group
• http//www.ifla.org/VII/s13/wgfrbr/wgfrbr.htm
• Bibliography
• FRBR Discussion List
• OCLC Office of Research FRBR Web Site
• http//www.oclc.org/research/projects/frbr/

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More Resources

• Denton, William. FRBR and Fundamental
  Cataloguing Rules. May 2003. Available at
  http//www.miskatonic.org/library/frbr.html
• This presentation on the web
• http//library.fdu.edu/njlafrbr

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Questions?
Glenn Patton pattong_at_oclc.org 1-800-848-5878,
ext. 6371