The FRBR Blog

Hi. I usually get this out on Fridays, but I hope you don’t miss it because it’s coming out on Saturday this week. Seems like it was a slowish week in FRBRania. The first couple of pieces involve the RDA-L mailing list archives (RDA being, of course, the new cataloguing rules Resource Description and Access) and also Karen Coyle .

Mix and Match: Mashups of Bibliographic Data

Mix and Match: Mashups of Bibliographic Data at the recent American Library Association conference had people from Google talking about Google Books metadata, OCLC talking about ONIX, and the Open Library talking about the Open Library. Eric Hellman was there and wrote it up in Google Exposes Book Metadata Privates at ALA Forum, which a lot of people have been pointing out, including on RDA-L.

Karen Coyle, who was the Open Library person at the session, brought the four FRBR user tasks into talk about alphabetical ordering of titles:

In FRBR we have the four user tasks: find, identify, select, obtain. These are fully imbued with the assumption of user knowledge.

“to find entities that correspond to the user’s stated search criteria (i.e., to locate either a single entity or a set of entities in a file or database as the result of a search using an attribute or relationship of the entity);”

This seems to eliminate the possibility that the user could be successful in the library catalog with a need like: “I just finished Twilight and loved it. What else might I like?” Yet that is a legitimate query to bring to the library, and even to the library catalog. Perhaps we should spend some time re-writing the FRBR user tasks, expanding them to meet a wider variety of user needs. Then we could look at our catalogs and say: “What does this mean in terms of catalog functionality?” I maintain that alphabetical order will not be at the top of our list, but will probably appear along some user tasks.

Peter Murray was also there, and wrote it up in Mashups of Bibliographic Data: A Report of the ALCTS Midwinter Forum:

[From the OCLC section.] If there is an exact match for the incoming ONIX record in WorldCat, the WorldCat record is enhanced with certain fields from the ONIX record (descriptions, author biographies, web links) — being careful not to override authority work being done by libraries, but adding enhancements that libraries may not otherwise input. In turn, enhancements from exact match record and FRBR work set records (hardcover versus softcover versus audiobook, etc.) are added to the ONIX record (non-English subject headings, adding a Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) field from another similar record if one doesn’t already exist, change the author field to an authority-controlled version). If there is not an exact match for the ONIX record in WorldCat, a new WorldCat record is built from the ONIX record and it is subsequently enhanced by metadata found in the FRBR work set records.

RDA-L thread on RDA and granularity

Coyle began the RDA and Granularity thread prompted by a chat at a libary conference. As you can see from the archives it started a big long discussion that changed Subject. Somewhere in there John Myers posted in the Systems v Cataloging subthread:

[C]onsider the FRBR expression entity. A significant aspect in textual works between expressions is translation. We do have a 240 field to record that, but since the application of the rules for Uniform titles were left to the discretion of the cataloging agency, indication of an expression for a translation can also appear in a translation note recorded in tag 500, sometimes in conjunction with the 240 but oftentimes alone (as several thousand records in my catalog will attest). Now, if this data were consistently recorded in the 240 (both with respect to the format and to the application of use of the 240), then machine FRBR-ization of these records for translations would be relatively simple.

There was more FRBR discussion in the replies.

RDA National Test Update

Jennifer Eustis’s RDA National Test: Update points to Testing Resource Description and Access (RDA) at the Library of Congress, which sketches out how a bunch of libraries are going to test RDA before committing to use it. Because FRBR is fundamental to RDA, this will also be the biggest test so far of how FRBR helps bibliographic organization.

RDA vs. AACR2: Implications for Social Justice

On 11 January the New York City Radical Reference Collective ran RDA vs. AACR2: Implications for Social Justice, with Rick Block from Columbia University.

Jessica Lingel wrote notes on the session, which are worth reading. It looks like there was a good review of FRBR and RDA and where things are at, and then some interesting questions about that and the social justice and progressive side of cataloguing.

Question – what aspects of cataloging relate to issues of social justice?

It’s mostly a matter of subject headings. But even in descriptive cataloging, what gets included, what doesn’t has implications. RDA won’t so much change that, although it raise the question of personal archiving.

I’d never thought about this angle on FRBR and RDA. Very interesting subject. The first thing that strikes me is that in the linked data and Semantic Web approach anyone can say anything about anything. It will be much easier for people to apply their own sets or subsets of terminology to a group of things while still keeping connected with the rest of the universe, and for anyone else who wants to use that vocabulary to mix it in with their own system. This is a big improvement.

Assunção, FRBR and Music Uniform Title

Maria Clara Assunção has a paper called “FRBR and Music Uniform Title” in Páginas a & b 2:4 (2009), pp. 143-153.

The concepts of “work” and “expression” introduced by FRBR model, have particular implications for the rationale behind the construction of music uniform titles and can help to significantly improve the identification of musical works through this cataloguing resource. This study results from the practical need to establish a set of effective criteria in the development of uniform titles for musical works of a diverse nature, mostly of doubtful identification, often handwritten and sometimes anonymous. This paper aims to contribute to clarify this vital resource in the cataloguing of music but often avoided or misapplied.

LibraryThing, A FRBR Model of Publishers

I spent some time cleaning out my inbox. At work I’ve been doing Inbox Zero for a long time and it’s an enormous help, but my personal mailbox had a bunch of stuff in it that was dragging me down, so I started deleting. One thing I found was from Tim “Mr. LibraryThing” Spalding, sent in May 2009, pointing out a discussion on the LT site: A FRBR Model of of Publishers.

As many know, LibraryThing has a concept of “works” being composed of editions. And we have author and tag aliases.

Together, these concepts resemble what librarians call the FRBR model, and its siblings FRAR, FRSAR, FRBRoo, and FR-lama-lama-ding-dong.

Now, I want to do publishers. That is, I want to have pages for publishers.

This requires some model of how publishers are. An ideal model would understand that HarperCollins used to be called Harper Collins, that Collins is an imprint of HarperCollins, but was an independent company, etc. Truly publishers and imprints are much worse than authors or works. They’re a river you can’t step in twice and that calls itself a stream the next day. Also the river is only really significant insofar as books float down it. And there are beavers making dams, and fish and… Okay, not the last part.

So, does anyone have any advice on this problem? What does FRBR look like when applied to publishers, imprints and etc.?

I don’t know if this lead anywhere. To my surprise, even for the new Stephen King, Under the Dome, no publisher is listed in the Common Knowledge section. (It’s Scribner.) I had a look at a few books and didn’t see a Publisher field on any of them. I don’t know what’s going on there, or where Tim got with this, but that’s what happens when you let email sit around for eight months and then feel bad about not dealing with it.

Hillmann et al, RDA Vocabularies: Process, Outcome, Use

Diane Hillmann, Karen Coyle, Jon Phipps, and Gordon Dunsire have a paper in the new D-Lib: RDA Vocabularies: Process, Outcome, Use. Definitely look at this.

ABSTRACT: The Resource Description and Access (RDA) standard, due to be released this coming summer, has included since May 2007 a parallel effort to build Semantic Web enabled vocabularies. This article describes that effort and the decisions made to express the vocabularies for use within the library community and in addition as a bridge to the future of library data outside the current MARC-based systems. The authors also touch on the registration activities that have made the vocabularies usable independently of the RDA textual guidance. Designed for both human and machine users, the registered vocabularies describe the relationships between FRBR, the RDA classes and properties and the extensive value vocabularies developed for use within RDA.

Karen Coyle, RDA Vocabularies for a Twenty-First-Century Data Environment

Karen Coyle’s been busy. She had an excerpt from her upcoming issue of Library Technology Reports posted at the ALA Tech Source blog: RDA Vocabularies for a Twenty-First-Century Data Environment. They explain: “Karen Coyle is in the putting the finishing touches on the February issue of Library Technology Reports, titled “RDA Vocabularies for a Twenty-First-Century Data Environment”. In the following excerpt, she addresses the difficulty that many librarians have in understanding the basic concepts of FRBR, and offers some diagrams to clarify them. Though understanding FRBR may be tricky, she argues, it is essential to a transformation to a modern, workable data environment.”

RDA pricing

Speaking of Resource Description and Access, the cost of this new cataloguing standard was announced. It starts at $325 for the first user and then it’s about $50 for each extra user. Jennifer Eustis posted some details about what that gets you. I think RDA should be free.

The FRBR Family

Functional Requirements: the FRBR Family of Models is (I think?) a new page on the IFLA web site.

FRAD available in Chinese but not English

A Chinese translation of Functional Requirements for Authority Data has been posted on the IFLA web site. The original English expression of FRAD is available in a print manifestation, and will be available for download from IFLA, but it’s not up yet. Strange, but such, I think, are the workings of an international federation of library associations and institutions.

Murray, Re-Imagining the Bibliographic Universe

Updated link/file for Ronald Murray’s Re-Imagining the Bibliographic Universe: FRBR, Physics & the World Wide Web talk from November 2009. (That’s the 472-slider, but don’t be alarmed.)

Boer, MetaLex Naming Conventions and the Semantic Web

Rinke Hoekstra points out a paper by Alexander Boer in Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications, MetaLex Naming Conventions and the Semantic Web (DOI: 10.3233/978-1-60750-082-7-31). An excerpt from his explanation:

As an XML standard for legal sources (laws, court proceedings etc.) MetaLex has been around for some time now (developed by the University of Amsterdam in 2001), but the relatively new CEN MetaLex brings a significant overhaul of the original design. The new mechanism for specifying naming conventions is but one aspect of this. MetaLex names are used in self-identification of documents, citation of other documents, and inclusion of document components according to the FRBR levels of item, manifestation, expression and work….

This paper introduces the naming mechanism (which is quite intricate), and describes how the uniqueness of IRIs can be guaranteed by using a GRDDL transform for translating the property-value pairs encoded in the IRI to OWL class axioms (using nominals, and proper relations between the different FRBR levels). A DL classifier can then infer owl:sameAs relations between entities (individuals) described using the appropriate property value pairs.

Melgar, Topic Maps and Catalogues of Museums, Libraries and Archives

Topic Maps and Catalogues of Museums, Libraries and Archives, by Liliana Melgar.

The following case study is going to show examples of Topic Maps based projects especially for catalogues of museums, libraries or archives. The first part describes two projects using Topic Maps by implementing data with the FRBR-model. The second part of the study concentrates on another two projects that uses the Topic Map paradigm to integrate several catalogues.

(Via Catalogablog.)

Aalberg, Formats and FRBR Catalogues – Where’s Our Focus?

Speaking of topic maps, I came across Formats and FRBR Catalogues – Where’s Our Focus? It’s an undated presentation by Trond Aalberg. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here before.

JJR on the notion of a Work

JJR, in Newly Unemployed, in part mentions disagreements with RDA and FRBR:

I also have deep philosophical issues with FRBR, especially its notion of a “work” in the abtract, which drives me up the wall, as there is no such animal. There is always an Ur-Text somewhere. I’m just too much of a hard nosed materialist to buy the Platonic notions that FRBR seems grounded in.

Attitudes like that do not get you counted among library movers and shakers, regardless how true they might be.

Maybe not a Mover and Shaker, but definitely a Shover and Maker.

A couple of days late this week. My Internet access is apparently broken in three different ways, and the phone company can’t even explain how it could have been working last week.

Zhang and Salaba, Implementing FRBR in Libraries: Key Issues and Future Directions

There’s a new FRBR book! Implementing FRBR in Libraries: Key Issues and Future Directions by Yin Zhang and Athena Salaba, published by Neal Schumann. Here’s the publisher’s description:

This book is ideal for anyone who aims to obtain an overview of the current status of Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) development. It helps identify the key FRBR issues that need to be addressed and investigates the future directions of FRBR development.

Implementing FRBR in Libraries: Key Issues and Future Directions is the first book to address the theory and implementation of FRBR in a unified discussion. Authors Yin Zhang and Athena Salaba, winners of the 2009 ALISE/Bohdan S. Wynar Research Paper Competition Award, give readers a clear framework for understanding FRBR’s current and potential implications on library catalogs. They provide a thorough introduction to the history of FRBR and its possible benefits, a detailed description of the FRBR model and its components, and a discussion of its practical influence in transforming description standards, cataloging and metadata practices. The book includes examples of how professionals are successfully applying FRBR in real-life library settings, and explores various methods for effectively implementing the FRBR model. Each chapter includes illustrations to help reinforce fundamental concepts. The book contains a comprehensive appendix of key terms and acronyms to aid readers new to the field and a list of projects and software to showcase practical FRBR applications.

Library catalogers, indexers, metadata creators, reference librarians, researchers, and LIS educators and students who need to know, or know more about, FRBR will find this refreshingly straightforward book invaluable.

I’ll post any links I see about this. I’m looking forward to reading it. Nice to see more books about FRBR out there!

Massart, Information for Learning Object Exchange

David Massart’s talk Information for Learning Object Exchange, which looks at how FRBR can be applied to learning objects, is up on Slideshare. You can also download the PowerPoint slides (2.7 MB PPT). I think the talk was given on 2 November 2009, but I’m not sure where.

Vocabulary Mapping Framework

The Vocabulary Mapping Framework issued some updates. What is it? The Vocabulary Mapping Framework (VMF): An Introduction says:

1.1 Purpose of the VMF

The initial aim of VMF is to provide a freely available tool which can be used to automatically compute the “best fit” mappings between terms in controlled vocabularies in different metadata schemes and messages (both standard and, in principle, proprietary) which are of interest to the educational, bibliographic and content publishing sectors. This tool is known as the VMF matrix. The ontology is likely to have other uses but this is the start point where there appears to be immediate practical benefit.

1.2 Scope of first release

The first release of the VMF matrix (the “alpha” release, as it is usable for experimentation but requires thorough practical testing, error-fixing and refinement) includes selected controlled vocabularies and parts of vocabularies from CIDOC CRM, DCMI, DDEX, FRAD, FRBR, IDF, LOM (IEEE), MARC21, MPEG21 RDD, ONIX and RDA as well as the complete RDA-ONIX Framework from which VMF is in part derived. URLs for the above can be found at the project website. The scope of VMF is not limited to these schemes and standards, but these are the initial focus, and many of them have representatives in the VMF project.

The documents page has files of RDF triples that map elements from one ontology to another. They’re at an alpha stage right now, with datestamped filenames, so I won’t link to them, but have a look. This will be very useful in the linked data world.

FRBR and Linked Data in O’Reilly’s Catalogue

Ed Summers tweeted to point out Ivan Herman’s blog post RDFa usage spreading…, which says in part:

This morning I found out that O’Reilly has begun to systemically add RDFa to their catalog pages. Eg, the page on the “Switching to the Mac” book can produce the RDF information using the RDFa distiller. Note the code uses well established vocabularies: Core FRBR, GoodRelations, Foaf, Dublin Core… ie, using this data with other mashup sites become much easier!

OCLC’s Classify

This isn’t new but I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before, and I always forget where it is: Classify, from OCLC: “Classify is a FRBR-based prototype designed to support the assignment of classification numbers and subject headings for books, DVDs, CDs, and other types of materials.” If you need a call number for a book and it doesn’t have the cataloguing-in-publication data inside, this is the fastest place to get it.

WorldCat Basic API

OCLC announced A New WorldCat API Available to All. The new WorldCat Basic API will let anyone query WorldCat and get back various kinds of bibliographic metadata, up to 1,000 queries per day, for noncommercial use. Peter Murray explains more about it, with examples, in OCLC Introduces an API for Anyone to Access Book Data. Very useful, and when mixed in with xISBN and the other xID services offered, you can get an awful lot of useful information quickly and easily.

ALCTS FRBR Interest Group Meeting at ALA Midwinter

Announcement about the ALCTS FRBR Interest Group meeting at the ALA Midwinter. If you’re at the conference in Boston on 15 January 2010 then you can go. Post something about it online if you do!

Shelly Couvrette Doodle

Staff Meeting Doodle has a nice drawing by Shelly Couvrette, done perhaps while she was in a meeting and talking about FRBR.

We’ve begun cataloging e-books from print copy records, instead of from the item itself, something that will make a lot of catalogers’ brains explodiate. But with the move toward FRBR, wherein multiple item types will be nested under one uber-bib record, this makes a whole lotta sense. Under the provider neutral model, individual variances (e.g. one manifestation has 155 pages and another has 146) are not important. Under FRBR (which is a long way from being implemented yet), format itself will cease to matter at the bibliographic record level (e.g. a book and a DVD of a movie made from the book will fall under the same master bib record). So I see the provider neutral model as a step toward FRBR.

Interesting stuff, if you’re a cataloger, but probably not so much otherwise.

Resource Description and Access Happy Fun Time Companion

Resource Description and Access Happy Fun Time Companion gets more and more interesting.

Sent by José Borbinha <jb@ist.utl.pt> to the FRBR mailing list today.)

This is an invitation to take part in an evaluation of an experiment in the TELplus project (http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/telplus)

Please evaluate the system described below and fill the questionnaire, according to the instructions.

The questionnaire is anonymous, and we estimate it can be answered in less than 5 minutes. However, it has to be preceded by a “test drive” with the system, which can take as long as you want…

We appreciate the answers to the questionnaire until the end of the day of December 16 (Wednesday), please!

For any further clarification, please feel free to email to
nuno.freire@bnportugal.pt [or] nuno.freire@bnportugal.pt.

Brief introduction

The aim of this task is to explore possible improvements for search in The European Library (http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org), under the assumption that a presentation of the results, following the general ideas of the FRBR model, could help.

Considering that The European Library amounts to about 150 million records in 32 different languages, this might have the potential to narrow down the search results by clustering similar records (including of multiple languages).

In order to evaluate that, we developed a case with a sample collection of the works of the Literature Nobel Prize winners. For that, we used records extracted from 11 libraries, thus with a high number of works with many translations in multiple languages. We are now inviting you to evaluate this system and answer to the questionnaire available at:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TELplus_FRBR_Prototype

Description of the system

The system to experiment is available here:

http://digmap2.ist.utl.pt:8080/lgteFrbr/indexFrbrClustering.jsp

The system was prepared like this:

1- All the records were received in MARC21 or UNIMARC

2- All the records were transformed to the “TEL Application Profile” and indexed by a Search Engine, just like The European Library is doing nowadays

3- In parallel, all the records were also processed to build a new “FRBR database”, built according to a set of “FRBR motivated” rules that try to pre-build clusters according to what is perceived to be the same work.

The way the system works is like this:

1- Each search is first done by the Search Engine! But instead of presenting the results immediately…

2- …they are first sent to the FRBR database, which returns the same results but now grouped according to what this database already knows from the initial work’s clustering (this might comprise more records than those initially found by the search engine, and also might include enhancements in author’s names and dates). These are the results that finally are shown to the user!

For easy evaluation of the prototype, and answering the questionnaire, the search results can also be seen without the FRBR clustering at:

http://digmap2.ist.utl.pt:8080/lgteFrbr/indexFrbrLibrary.jsp

Important things to know in advance

- The unique purpose of this experiment is to explore new ways to present search results in order to help ANONYMOUS users to better find resources, AND NOT TO PROPOSE ANY “FRBR OPAC”!!! We only looked for inspiration in the main concepts of the FRBR model, and we never intended to build a formal FRBR database!!! In this sense, we are hiding from the presentation of results any reference to any FRBR concept, for not distracting/confusing the user.

- However, this prototype also is intended to mainly be evaluated by librarians or professionals with knowledge of the domain, so we also were not concerned in providing a “final product”. This means that the presentation of the results was decided with the main purpose of supporting evaluation, and not usability. For example, in order to see a specific record, we just present
the original MarcXchange record, and did not care to provide any other visualization…

- Please do not search with diacritics. For example, to search by
“L’étranger”, please use “L’etranger”. We found a problem with this in the last moment with the search engine that might be solved at any moment, but until there is remain an annoying limitation…

- This service is hosted in a “working server”, so you might experience a slow performance if too many users are trying it on the same time… If that occurs, sorry, but please be patient…

- After this evaluation we will produce a public document with the results, as also the detailed description of the architecture of the system and of the processes…

The collection

This collection contains 92.535 records extracted from the following Libraries:

- British Library
- French National Library
- German National Library
- National Library of Hungary
- National Library of Latvia
- National Library of Lithuania
- National Library of Portugal
- National Library of Serbia
- National Library of Spain
- National Library of the Czech Republic
- Russian State Library (only records from Russian authors)

- We also received a collection form the Royal Library of Belgium, but it was not possible to use it due to a detail in the records for which we had no time to adapt the FRBR system…

The generic criteria for extraction was “all the records where the author was a Literature Nobel Prize winner” (we got a lot, but as you can imagine, we also got some noise… we did not care too much about that, as we don’t think it was important…).

———————————————-

Best Regards

José Borbinha (IST ~V INESC-ID)

Nuno Freire (National Library of Portugal)

Update on Ronald Murray and Paper Tools

Murray followed up on last week’s post by pointing out his 2008 paper The FRBR-Theoretic Library: The Role of Conceptual Data Modeling in Cultural Heritage Information System Design (197 KB PDF), “the paper that presents the conceptual data model that jump started the paper tool.”

ABSTRACT: The use of digital technologies in support of Cultural Heritage missions has highlighted the need to create information modeling systems different from those that are used in conventional business and government. In addition, the practice of data modeling – and especially of the conceptual data modeling that engages cataloging theory and practice – must be urgently be brought up to date in order to develop the data models required to represent the desirable characteristics of both print and digital media.

Regarding the 472 slides in Reimagining the Bibliographic Universe: FRBR, Physics and the World Wide Web, he said readers should use the bookmarks inside the PDF to jump right to the sections that interest them most, and that “the slides with the blue band are attended to provide supplementary information and were not shown during presentation.”

Ockerbloom, Some Concepts and Their Catalogs

In Some Concepts and Their Catalogs John Mark Ockerbloom uses FRBR in his discussion of “concept-oriented catalogs” that “go beyond the bibliographic record.”

IFLA Cataloguing Section Strategic Plan 2009-2011

From the 2009-2011 strategic plan of the Cataloguing Section of IFLA:

Continue development and use of IFLA’s FRBR family of conceptual models.  Pillar: Profession; Professional priorities: (f) Promoting resource sharing; (h) Developing library professionals; (i) Promoting standards, guidelines and best practices)

• 2.1.  Maintain and develop the FRBR model in an entity-relationship formulation.
  • Assess any amendments to be recommended by the Working Group on Aggregates;
  • Review the attributes of the Group 1 entities;
  • Assess other reviewing suggestions and follow through as appropriate.
• 2.2.  Explore the preparation of a consolidated document for IFLA’s FRBR family of conceptual models in an entity-relationship formulation.
  • Determine the scope and format of a consolidated conceptual model document;
  • Identify areas in which the FRAD model results in revisions of the FRBR model
  • Once FRSAD is approved, identify areas in which the FRSAD model results in revisions to FRBR.
• 2.3.  Maintain and develop an object-oriented formulation of FRBR (FRBRoo) jointly with CIDOC-CRM.
  • Develop a "core" FRBRoo model for implementation;
  • Support the development of an implementation prototype;
  • Expand FRBRoo to include additional entities, attributes and relationships from the FRAD model;
  • Encourage the further harmonisation of conceptual models by participating in joint work with the archival community and other relating communities.
• 2.4.  Develop, update and make available guidelines and interpretative documents to assist those applying IFLA’s FRBR family of conceptual models.
  • Update the FRBR Bibliography semi-annually;
  • Prepare new FAQs for the FRBR pages on the IFLA website, starting with those on the expression entity;
  • Provide interpretative text on the treatment of aggregates within FRBR.
• 2.5.  Continue representation on the IFLA Working Group on Functional Requirements of Subject Authority Records (FRSAR).
• 2.6.  Maintain liaisons between the FRBR Review Group and the ISBD Review Group and with rule-makers in order to have the main principles of FRBR and FRAD reflected in cataloguing codes.
• 2.7.  Maintain liaisons with other IFLA units, vendor groups (such as the ALA FRBR Implementers’ Group), and with other relevant groups to assure widespread awareness and use of FRBR and FRAD.
• 2.8.  Monitor and publicize translations of the FRBR and FRAD documents.

CiTO, Citation Typing Ontology

Jodi Schneider pointed out a couple of things to me, saying “Wondering if you’ve seen CiTO, which applies FRBR.” (Thanks, Jodi.)

• CiTO, the Citation Typing Ontology, and its use for annotation of reference lists and visualization of citation networks (76 KB PDF) by David Shotton. “The fourth purpose of CiTO is to enable the cited works themselves to be characterized, so that someone reading a reference list marked up using CiTO can better appreciate their nature. In making this characterization, CiTO has adopted the classification developed by FRBR … for characterizing different aspects of a publication.”
• The Citation Typing Ontology specified. “CiTO, the Citation Typing Ontology, is an ontology for describing the nature of reference citations in scientific research articles and other scholarly works on the Semantic Web.”

Brenndorfer Reviews Maxwell’s Book

A Review of FRBR: A Guide for the Perplexed, book by Robert Maxwell, reviewed by Thomas Brenndorfer in Cataloging &amp Classification Quarterly 47:8, November 2009.

Although not a simplified introduction to FRBR, Maxwell’s FRBR: A Guide for the Perplexed can be a rewarding read for the perplexed provided they put an effort into carefully following the definitions, the matching diagrams, and the issues and problems that Maxwell adds to the examples he provides for the entities, attributes, relationships, and user tasks found within the bibliographic universe as demarcated by FRBR.

From Bibliographic Models to Cataloging Rules: Remarks on FRBR, ICP, ISBD, and RDA and the Relationships Between Them, Bianchini and Guerrini

From Bibliographic Models to Cataloging Rules: Remarks on FRBR, ICP, ISBD, and RDA and the Relationships Between Them, by Carlo Bianchini and Mauro Guerrini. Cataloging &amp Classification Quarterly 47:2, February 2009. (Not last week, but it’s new to me.)

Abstract: This article discusses the changes that are occurring in the world of cataloging. It argues that these changes need to be coordinated. It also discusses the feature of current OPACs, FRBR, the Paris Principles and its proposed replacement (ICP), AACR2 and its proposed replacement (RDA), ISBD, and the relationships between and among these standards. It argues that the syntax of ISBD is an essential component of RDA and all future international and national cataloging codes.

(Updated 16 December 2009 to fix a URL typo.)

RDA Delayed

The release of Resource Description and Access (the new FRBR-based cataloguing rules) has been delayed until June 2010. Mary Ghikas sent a message:

RDA: Resource Description and Access will be published in June 2010. While we regret this delay in release of RDA, the transition from publication of AACR2 as a printed manual to release of RDA as a web based toolkit is a complex process with many interdependencies.

The updated text of RDA incorporates recommendations from constituencies and other stakeholders approved at the JSC meeting earlier this year. The revised text has been successfully loaded into the RDA database. The product is currently undergoing thorough quality review and testing in preparation for release.

We recognize that customers and prospective users of RDA need reliable and timely information for planning and budgeting. We are confident that this revised deadline is a realistic target for publication of RDA.

November 2009 had been the planned release date. It doesn’t surprise me that something so huge as RDA would go late, especially since they’re turning it into a customizable online system.

Ronald Murray and Paper Tools

I mentioned last week that Ronald Murray was giving a talk on 30 November at the Library of Congress, where he works. Now he’s made available a PDF with his slides: Reimagining the Bibliographic Universe: FRBR, Physics and the World Wide Web (24.4 MB ZIP with 472-slide PDF inside). A screencast of the talk will be up on the LC web site soon, so watch out for the link.

Open Library

In An Update on Open Library, someone (George Oates?) posts about a number of big things going on at the Open Library, including this:

Works

Open Library (and a lot of other library systems out there) deal with books at the edition level. This makes finding “War and Peace” really tricky, because all we can currently return are the hundreds of editions in a big unordered list that’s very difficult to parse. In line with a new reasonably new cataloging standards initiative called Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR), we’ll be introducing a “super-level” of book called “the Work”. The idea is that you’ll be able to use this “Work” as a starting point into the books you’re interested in. We’ll be able to list things like all a Work’s editions (including translations of the original), the subjects of the book, and excerpts, all at that “super” level that describes what the Work is about almost in spite of how many editions have been printed.

We have been toiling for the past several months to roll up all our editions into logical Works. This is incredibly tricky, and as much as we would like it to be bulletproof perfect on the first go, it’s likely people will see one edition that should be in certain Work, or author records that are really same person. The next logical step for us will be to provide tools to help you fix a glitch like that if you find it. That said, we’ve been testing our brand new Work search lately, and it’s given me (at least) an entirely different and exciting new view on the Open Library. We can suddenly see things like the books in our catalog with the most editions, or all the Works by Mark Twain (instead of a massive list of all the editions he’s supposed to have written) and more. Truly, it’s invigorating after being stuck in the edition “mud” for so long. Not that edition data is bad, of course, just that the aggregate is extremely useful.

There are some interesting UI challenges coming up around questions like when we should show a Work in the search results opposed to when we should show an Edition, but we’ll go with what feels right for now and listen to what you all think and adjust into the future.

Great news!

Morbus Iff took an interest in FRBR a few years ago and began some work on it, making a start on a Drupal (a web site content management system) module that would use it: LibDB. As the datestamps show, he abandoned it, as often happens.

But he says, “I never stopped thinking about it.” In Drupal 7 and FRBR: A Mental Model, he puts down what he’s been thinking about regarding getting FRBR into the newest version of Drupal. (Which from what little I know is going to be really good.) It’s Drupal-heavy, so if you don’t use Drupal you might get confused.

Drupal 7 is “nearing” release and I’m once again thinking about FRBR. 7 now has the ability to add custom fields to its content types, functionality that previously required the contributed module CCK. While CCK, as a framework, had tons of additional third-party modules that mocked up different types of fields, Drupal 7 doesn’t, solely because it isn’t in the wild yet. I don’t consider this bad news, really, because I’ve always been of the opinion that most of the contributed modules available to Drupal are crap. They scratch itches, certainly, but very few of them are what I’d consider quality productions. So, for me, thinking about Drupal 7 and FRBR is thus constrained to “core” and “my own custom code”. Primarily, I’m interested to see just how much of FRBR could be modeled without custom code at all, so I’ve made some odd decisions to accentuate this. One could even accuse me of “just” making a boring old cataloguing system: regardless, I’m doing it with FRBR’s model fully in mind.

This is the last two weeks in FRBR, actually. Lots of stuff to point out to you. (I just realized I don’t get notified when there are comments waiting for approval, so a few have been sitting in the queue. Sorry about that. I’ll change it.)

Alison Carlyle says 2010 is the Year of Cataloguing (or something like that) and FRBR is involved. Of course!

Next Monday Ron Murray is giving a talk called Re-Imagining the Bibliographic Universe — FRBR, Physics and the World Wide Web. The abstract:

In response to dramatic increases in the quantity and types of culturally significant resources in libraries, cataloging theories like FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) have become more complex when compared to traditional cataloging theories. The need to re-conceptualize and justify bibliographic resource description theories is now critical, due to the emergence of the World Wide Web – whose structure and content is more varied and more dynamic than that of libraries. To support the argument that the “commonsense imagery” of analog materials limits our thinking about cataloging and about resource description in general, the speaker will review how for atomic physicists, the “commonsense imagery” of physical processes had to be abandoned in the early 20th Century because the mathematics that explained the measurements of physical processes could no longer be related to any perceivable object or event. The diagrams that have fueled physicist’s imagination since 1945 correspond to nothing in the physical world – but were instead generated by the theories created by the physicists. The speaker suggests that the complexity of analog and digital Cultural Heritage resources warrants a similar approach to their description. This approach – “Paper Tool” creation and use – applies equally well to bibliographic descriptions of library content as well as to the emerging Semantic Web.

Ron Murray sent me up a bunch of interesting stuff about this, and I have been sitting on it and not gotten around to giving it a serious think or posting about it. It’s quite thought-provoking, and if a recording of his talk is available afterwards then I’ll link to it and you’ll want to listen to it.

Lukas Koster asks Is an E-book a Book? “First, we need see how all this fits together before we can answer the question ‘Is an e-book a book?’ or more precise: ‘In which sense is an e-book a book?’ Fortunately there is already a conceptual model for bibliographic entities and the relationships between them that describes this: FRBR.” And later: “I also think we should use the possibilities of the FRBR model to start describing, cataloging and identifying the ’stories’ (chapters, articles, etc.) that make up books and e-books separately, as units of content in their own right. People are interested in the content, the ’stories’, not the physical items or artificial digital aggregate units like e-books or e-journals.”

Kent Anderson asks, How Many Books Dance on the Head of an E-pin? It’s a response to Koster’s post. “Should we trim up the tree further? Simply stop at ‘expression’? In that case, you would have the expression of the work ‘Tom Sawyer,’ with the FRBR silent from that point on. And that may be where we’re headed — toward a world that can’t presume items or manifestations, but only list expressions of works. Or perhaps we should evacuate some of the detail from “manifestation” in order to provide an appropriate silence on the issues involved.”

Lukas Koster also pointed out a couple of interesting things in a tweet.

First, UNIMARC, RDA and the Semantic Web (130 KB PDF), a paper given by Gordon Dunsire at IFLA in Italy in August. The abstract:

The paper will discuss the application of Resource Description and Access (RDA), the emerging
successor to the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, as a content standard for metadata encoded in
UNIMARC. RDA is designed for international application in a digital environment, and is not aligned
with any specific bibliographic record encoding format, although work is ongoing to develop its
application to MARC21 and Dublin Core formats. The paper will also discuss the implications of
making components of RDA and associated models such as Functional Requirements for
Bibliographic Records (FRBR) and Functional Requirements for Authority Data (FRAD) compatible
with the Semantic Web.

Second, RDA and the Semantic Web, slides from a talk given in Seoul earlier this year by Alexander Haffner. FRBR starts on slide three.

Library student Michael Steeleworthy might do a reading course on FRBR. “I’m pushing for this in part because I’m not enthused about the course options for winter term, but mostly because I’m not comfortable with the level of knowledge I have on the organization of data and records to feel qualified to apply for a job in the sub-field.” He even scanned in some notes he took while reading Arlene Taylor’s Understanding FRBR.

Jennifer Eustis posted Are User Tasks Outdated Asks NGC4LIB from that never-ending mailing list thread which I still haven’t read.

And there’s some mention of FRBR in Bugs in Amber, Diane Hillmann’s analysis of Study of the North American MARC Records Marketplace (1.1 MB PDF), a report that the Library of Congress commissioned from R2 Consulting. It asks, “[A]re traditional cataloging and the MARC record—even after modernization by RDA and FRBR—still necessary in an era of full‐text indexing”? Diane replies: “Leaving aside the odd assumption that RDA and FRBR represent the ‘modernization’ of the traditional MARC record, they couch the issue only in the context of a limited number of technologies, never mentioning the gorilla in the room, the data being built by others outside our comfy and bounded silo.”

Lots of people have been linking to Rob Styles’s Bringing FRBR Down to Earth.

Wuthering Heights is a work by Emily Bronte, realized in a written expression of the same name. The written expression is embodied in several different manifestations each of which is exemplified by many items, one of which I hold in my hand.

… The difficulty I, and I suspect many others, have is that I don’t ever use any of those words. They’re too abstract to be useful. FRBR generalises its model and in that generalisation loses a great deal. Let’s talk about it using more natural language.

Wuthering Heights is a story by Emily Bronte. It was originally published as a novel in 1847 and has subsequently been made into a movie (several times) and re-published in many languages beyond its original English. It has been republished in many editions and as a part of many collections. It features several fictitious people including Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff. The author, Emily Bronte, had sisters who authored several other novels, though she authored only this one. Emily Bronte is also the subject of several biographies. I have the paperback in my hand right now.

I don’t have any of those problems and think FRBR as it is, with extra labels for things, handles the situation quite clearly. Rob’s more human-readable version could easily be modelled by FRBR and using those words without the WEMI structure would confuse things. But then, I edit this blog, and I’m definitely not one of the many others who don’t ever use those words, so who knows?