IFLA 2005 minutes available
Minutes of the FRBR Review Group’s Meeting: Oslo, August 18, 2005 (274 KB PDF) are finally available from the Review Group’s web site. It’s ten pages long, has the minutes of the one meeting they had at the IFLA conference in the summer, and includes reports from the working groups, the election of a new chair, and a list of decisions made about possible changes to FRBR.
If you weren’t at the meeting (and unless you’re one of nineteen people (from thirteen countries!), you weren’t), you’ll want to read this to know what was discussed and what the Review Group’s plans are for FRBR.
3) Future plans for the Review Group
Given the importance of the topics to be addressed, the newly formed WG on Aggregates will presumably prove to be a major element in the RG’s policy for the two years to come.
The WG on FRBR teaching and training, chaired by Maja Žumer, and that was dormant until now, might become active this year. Materials such as lectures, experience reports from teachers, etc., could be posted on the page of the RG’s Web site that was created for that purpose.
Maja Žumer suggested that the conclusions from the Dublin Meeting be taken as a starting point for the RG’s future plans. Those conclusions are examined and distributed among the various WGs affiliated to the RG:
- “The FRBR Review Group will focus on the revision of attributes and relationships that are defined for Group 1 entities, as the FRANAR and FRSAR Study Groups will deal with Group 2 and Group 3 of entities”: this task remains to be done at the RG’s level.
- “A ‘middle implementation model’, which will include a practical definition for the Expression entity, will be developed by the FRBR Review Group”: this task is to be done by the WG on the Expression entity.
- “The FRBR Revision Group will post on its Web site more examples of ‘agglomerates’ for commentators to react, so that consensus can be reached about the best way to deal with such complex entities as anthologies, collected vs. selected works, serials, etc.”: this task is to be done by the WG on Agglomerates.
- “The FRBR Review Group will contact the CONSER Task Force on FRBR & Continuing Resources in order to take benefit of their approach to continuing resources”: this task is to be done by the WG on Agglomerates.
- “The utmost complex topic of Web resources is postponed for the time being”: but it will have to be addressed by the WG on Agglomerates.
- “Is the Subject relationship a Work property only? The FRBR Review Group thinks that ‘aboutness’ is actually only at the Work level, but that subject headings such as we currently know them do not deal exclusively with ‘aboutness’. The FRSAR Study Group will explore that”: as a consequence, it goes out of the scope of the FRBR RG.
- “The FRBR Review Group will contact vendors in order to ask them what they think the issues are for introducing the FRBR concepts into library catalogues. What do they expect from us in order to go ahead? What are their needs?”: this has been incepted by Alan Danskin.
- “The FRBR Review Group will besides strive to promote and stimulate research and study by doctoral students, professors, etc.”: this is to be done by the WG on FRBR teaching and training.
- “The FRBR Review Group acknowledged that the FRBR model would benefit from an ontology, and that the FRBR/CRM Harmonisation Group is going in that direction”: this task is therefore already distributed.
Barbara Tillett also insists that the suggestions from the FRANAR Group and IME ICC should be examined. She volunteers to compile all of them after the series of IME ICC meetings will be over.