Work, expression, manifestation, item … blog.
A weblog following developments around the world in FRBR: Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records.
Maintained by William Denton, Web Librarian at York University. Suggestions and comments welcome at wtd@pobox.com.
Confused? Try What Is FRBR? (2.8 MB PDF) by Barbara Tillett, or Jenn Riley's introduction. For more, see the basic reading list.
Books: FRBR: A Guide for the Perplexed by Robert Maxwell (ISBN 9780838909508) and Understanding FRBR: What It Is and How It Will Affect Our Retrieval Tools edited by Arlene Taylor (ISBN 9781591585091) (read my chapter FRBR and the History of Cataloging).
The Working Group on FRBR/CRM Dialogue has a page on IFLA’s web site now.
“CIDOC CRM is the conceptual reference model for museum information, expressed in object-oriented formalism,” it explains, in case you were wondering. FRBR and CIDOC people are working to make an object-oriented version of FRBR, called FRBRoo. You can download a draft of their work and see minutes of meetings on their web page. This is interesting work.
(Seen on Catalogablog.)
Pardon me while I catch up on some of the things that happened over the last couple of weeks. You know how it is.
On 18 June 2007, Nathalie Schulz, secretary of the Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA, sent out e-mail to the RDA mailing list about a revised draft of chapters 6 and 7 and a revised scope document. She said, “For information, the RDA Scope and structure document has been revised and now has two accompanying documents, an RDA element analysis and an RDA to FRBR mapping.”
If you’re following FRBR and FRAD in RDA, you’ll want to read all of this. Comments?
Discussion of all of this will appear in the RDA mailing list June 2007 archive file sometime in July, if you who aren’t on the list want to read it.
Mark Pilgrim’s blog entry from yesterday, 5½ Lessons That Legitimate Retailers Can Learn from Pirates, is interesting and worth reading (as is everything Pilgrim writes), but it takes on a bit of added interest when it’s seen from a FRBR point of view. Here’s a movie (a work, with the final cut as the expression) which studios manifest on film or on DVD. But pirates make their own manifestation, and Pilgrim shows how they offer a lot more information and options about their manifestations than the studio does. They may create their own expressions, even, by adding their own translated subtitles.
If you’re new to Mark Pilgrim then I recommend browsing through the links at the bottom of the page.
A quick note to let you know that I’m now Web Librarian at York University Libraries in Toronto, Ontario. I’m very happy to be there. If you’re ever at York, or in Toronto, feel free to drop me a note. (Feel free even if you’re not, of course.) I’ll be getting out to more conferences, so I’ll see you at those too.
Here’s a short video interview with Eric Hellman of OCLC done by Richard Wallis of Talis. xISBN is discussed in it.
Update: This didn’t work for me using a Linux Flash plugin in Linux Opera on FreeBSD, but it’s fine elsewhere.
It’ll be a slow month here. I’ll catch up later. Stay calm. Be brave. Wait for the signs.
Anyone know more about Monte Sano Associates’ FRBR Floater? It’s a subscription service that, it says, adds FRBRized views to a library’s catalogue without the library having to do anything.
Their one page PDF brochure explains:
FRBR Floater, from Monte Sano Associates, is an innovative new service that enables users to view, in an easy-to-read OPAC window, the various editions and formats owned by the library of any title searched. The user may then simply browse the list and select the one item that is most appropriate.
Libraries need not recatalog their collections or manipulate their bibliographic databases, because we use a sophisticated algorithm, based on the new international FRBR standard, to harvest the needed data from your existing MARC catalog records. As a result, libraries and their users can enjoy the benefits of FRBR without the time and expense of database analysis and re-design.
Seems to be something like LibraryThing for Libraries. Is it vapourware? I e-mailed Monte Sano a while ago but never got a reply.
I saw this because someone tagged it at CiteULike: “Applying FRBR Model as a Conceptual Model in Development of Metadata for Digitized Thai Palm Leaf Manuscripts,” by N. Chamnonsri, L. Manmart, V. Wuwongse, and E. Jacob, Digital Libraries: Achievements, Challenges and Opportunities (2006), pp. 254-263.
The CiteULike page itself has some more information.
Abstract: This paper outlines the adaptation of IFLA’s Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) for development of a metadata scheme to represent palm leaf manuscripts (PLMs) and facilitate their retrieval in digital collections. The FRBR model uses a structured, four-level hierarchy to represent an intellectual work with multiple titles, editions or formats. Because FRBR focuses on representation of the conceptual work rather than the physical entity, it must be modified for representation of PLMs. In this modified model, the level of work applies to the physical PLM rather than its conceptual content; expression applies to the languages in which the PLM occurs; manifestation applies to the formats in which each expression is available; and item applies to individual copies of a single format. The modified model has been used to devise a metadata scheme where each level has its own set of elements. Keywords: Metadata, FRBR Model, Palm Leaf Manuscript, Digital Collection.
Wikipedia’s page on palm leaf manuscripts will give you some background. Digitizing these is a great project.
Two months ago (!) Gary Price of ResourceShelf sent me a link to FRBR and OAI-PMH, a posting over there pointing to some information about the use of FRBR at The European Library.
My tardiness is shameful, but it does allow me to add a link to the recent Library Geeks episode with Gary Price in conversation with Dan Chudnov. There’s nothing FRBRy about it, but it’s worth a listen if you’re the kind of person who follows blogs like this, which, as I can see, you are.
Understanding FRBR: What It Is and How It Will Affect Our Retrieval Tools, edited by Arlene Taylor and published by Libraries Unlimited, has been delayed until November. I have a chapter in the book and was quite looking forward to seeing it this spring, but now you have six extra months to get an order for it into your library’s system. Rest assured I’ll let you know when it’s available.
Understanding FRBR is listed at Amazon.com now, if you want to get it that way.
UPDATE: Arlene Taylor left a comment with the revised contents listing, which I’ll add to the main body of this entry so that no-one misses it: