Semantic web + FRBR + union catalogue
An Argument for a Semantic Web Based FRBR Union Catalogue, by Jillian C. Wallis, is a shortish paper done in 2004 for Phil Agre’s course Information Retrieval Systems at UCLA (there are useful links about the Semantic Web there).
Abstract. IFLA’s FRBR is a semantic expression of the relationships between items in the library catalog. The web technologies currently being developed by the W3C could be used to implement these expressions. A new layer would need to be developed on top of the MARC XML layer, to aggregate all of the holdings and descriptive data into a new union catalogue. Thus, the FRBR data could then live in this layer and give the library catalog the new functionality required by FRBR.
Stuff about FRBR and the Semantic Web is interesting. Now, I’m no cataloguer, but I think people would argue with the line that says union catalogues require MARC records and a transmission standard to move the records: MARC is the transmission standard (unless you’re talking IP or tape or sneakernet). I don’t know how commonly MARCXML is being adopted, either, but that’s neither here nor there. The comments about using XML schemas to represent the information about relationships that FRBR requires are interesting.