The FRBR Blog

The Joint Steering Committee for the Revision of AACR (Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules), which I’m proud to say you will find on a Canadian web site, has announced that a prospectus of Resource Description and Access is available. RDA, as you may know, is the new name for the next revision of AACR, and it’s very FRBRy. (I apologize for the acronymity of that sentence.)

A key element in the design of RDA is its alignment with the conceptual models for bibliographic and authority data developed by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). The FRBR [1] and FRAR [2] models provide RDA with an underlying framework that has the scope needed to support comprehensive coverage of all types of content and media, the flexibility and extensibility needed to accommodate newly emerging resource characteristics, and the adaptability needed for the data produced to function within a wide range of technological environments.

A second key element in the design of RDA is that it establishes a clear line of separation between the recording of data and the presentation of data. The major focus of RDA will be on providing guidelines and instructions on recording data to reflect attributes and relationships associated with the entities defined in the FRBR and FRAR models. The aim is to provide a set of instructions for recording data that can be applied independently of any particular structure or syntax for data storage or display. Guidelines and instructions on formatting data elements for purposes of presentation according to specifications set out in standards such as the ISBD(G) [3] and GARR [4] will be provided separately in appendices.

This is major stuff that will affect libraries and catalogues all over the world, so don’t miss it. There is a form you can use to make comments, too.

If the web page shows up in a funny font or something, you can always grab the PDF version instead.

Jennifer Bowen announced yesterday on the FRBR mailing list that her new paper is now available online for free: FRBR: Coming Soon to Your Library? It’s published in the July 2005 issue of Library Resources & Technical Services 49 (3).

Abstract: The FRBR data model holds great potential for improving access to library resources, but may not affect all libraries in the same way. The Joint Steering Committee for Revision of AACR, assisted by the work of the its Format Variation Working Group, is exploring ways to incorporate FRBR into the next edition of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules to facilitate collocation at the level of the FRBR entity expression. Several library system vendors are also adding FRBR-based functionality to their systems. A combination of these two approaches to FRBR can provide significant benefits to users. Most FRBR entities and attributes are already present in library catalog records, and the influence of FRBR can also be seen in existing library activities. FRBR is thus not something totally foreign, but a fresh, more rigorous way of thinking about what libraries already do that provides a basis for designing new ways to improve users’ access to library resources.

The paper is based on a presentation of the same title, FRBR: Coming Soon to Your Library?, which was given at the 2004 ALCTS special preconference on FRBR I mentioned earlier.

There are some mysterious blogs going on at the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama. It appears students are anonymously blogging short reviews of course readings for a summer offering of LS 500, Organization of Information, taught by Steven L. MacCall. Here are some FRBR-related entries, organized by blog number:

• 1: The FRBR specification
• 4: FRBR: Application of the Entity-Relationship Model to Humphry Clinker (Ed O’Neill)
• 6: FRBR: Hype or Cure-All? (Patrick Le Boeuf)
• 7 What is FRBR? (Barbara Tillett)
• 12: FRBR: Hype or Cure-All? (Patrick Le Boeuf)
• 14: The FRBR specification

Looks like some of the same articles were blogged for the same course in 2003: suzlib500.blogspot.com.

Here are three presentations (all PDFs) from a session called AACR3: The Next Big Thing in Cataloging, which happened on 26 June 2005 at the American Library Association conference in Chicago. All three are about how the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules are being revised and renamed to Resource Description and Access, which is influenced by FRBR.

• RDA: Resource Description and Access: Background and Context, by Barbara Tillett
• Looking Under the Hood and Kicking the Tires, by John Attig
• Changing Direction: From AACR to RDA, by Jennifer Bowen

Bowen’s has the least about FRBR (it’s mostly about how they’ve been doing their work), but it includes the written text of her speech, so you can really make sense of it. This is a great thing to have and I encourage more people to do it!

Martha Yee, of UCLA, sent a note to the mailing list (see link on left) to say that a new paper of hers is now available for free at UCLA’s online repository. http://repositories.cdlib.org/postprints/715 will lead you to “FRBRization: A Method for Turning Online Public Finding Lists into Online Public Catalogs,” first published in Information Technology and Libraries 24 (3) earlier this year. It’s a very interesting nineteen pages, with lots of details and examples, and it includes a critique of four implementations.

ABSTRACT: Problems users are having searching for known works in current OPACs are summarized, and it is suggested that a better understanding of AACR2R/MARC 21 authority, bibliographic, and holdings records would allow us to FRBR-ize our current OPACs using existing records. The presence of work and expression identifiers in bibliographic and authority records is analyzed. Recommendations are made concerning better indexing and display of works and expression/manifestations. Questions are raised about the appropriateness for the creation of true catalogs of client-server technology which delivers records over the Internet.

I’ve added a thing that will list recent comments in the left-hand side. This way it’ll be easier for you to notice if anyone has made any remarks recently.

Last week I mentioned that the American Association of Law Libraries Technical Services Special Interest Section, or, as I like to call it, the AALLTSSIS, was going to do a FRBRy session at their upcoming conference. It happened Monday, and they blogged it: TS-SIS Demo: Strategize and FRBRize your OPAC.

Claudia Conrad from Innovative Interfaces gave what sounds like a really interesting talk:

Innovative’s approach to FRBR is to leave the MARC record alone, but to use it to generate “keys” which are then combined to create the FRBR record…. [Conrad used FRBR on] a legal example, in this case Blackstone’s Commentaries. This was an interesting example because there are some copies of Blackstone’s Commentaries which are just that, and there are other’s which also include bits of early state law. The one we saw also included laws of Virgina. Most likely, we would want these two differing things to exist as two different Manifestations.

There’s a bit more in their report on this session. That’s a fascinating example to use.

I didn’t know he had a blog, but he does, and he mentioned FRBR there yesterday: More Pressure for Better Portals, on Stephen Abram’s blog Stephen’s Lighthouse.

It is also interesting to see how some folks have adapted their OPACs to discover a wider range of formats (like audio files, e-books, streaming media, etc.). It seems that these experiments are still coming somewhat from a physical object mindset rather than a virtual object mindset. I suppose when the next generation of AACR3 and FRBR rules are ultimately promulgated we’ll need to see another mindset.

Abram is a vice president at Sirsi, the library system vendor, and is just finishing up a year as president of the Canadian Library Association.

• At del.icio.us (about 60 there today)
• At Technorati (one there today)
• At Flickr (one there today)

The Technical Services Special Interest Section of the American Association of Law Libraries is having a half-hour session on FRBR next week at their annual conference: their blog entry on it says that Claudia Conrad from Innovative Interfaces will be talking about how to “Strategize and FRBRize Your OPAC.”

This will be one of those rare occasions when FRBR is discussed without the presence of any of Patrick Le Boeuf, Barbara Tillett, or someone from OCLC.