Hart, FRBR and School Libraries
Amy Hart wrote an interesting introduction to FRBR, “FRBR and School Libraries,” in the August/September 2006 issue of Library Media Connection. (I found it through my public library’s web site, which offers access to EBSCO’s MasterFile Premier.)
Not too many years ago while our shelf lists for retro-conversion to online MARC records, a colleague at Lexington (Massachusetts) Public Schools wondered why we had to have separate records for each of the versions of the same book. At their library media center, they added additional or replacement copies of a title to the original shelf list card, making notes at the copy level if there was different ISBN or publisher information. The library media specialist voiced the opinion that it made sense to list all the versions of Charlotte’s Web on one card since kids just want the story and don’t care whether it’s a republication, paperback, hardback, or reprint. Little did we know that while we were busy assigning the different versions on our single cards to separate MARC records, the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) was already working on a plan to reunite them.
That’s a useful example of how different kinds of users need different sorts of displays. If that school library were to be fully FRBRized now, I wonder what kind of online catalogue would work best for the current students, who probably browse the web and play video games a lot.