The FRBR Blog

Outcomes of the Meeting of the Joint Steering Committee [for the Development of RDA] Held in Chicago, USA, 15-20 October 2007 shows the committee’s response to the feedback it’s been getting about the structure of Resource Description and Access. I quote at length to reflect the increased FRBRosity:

At the meeting, the JSC agreed on a new organization for RDA. This organization was suggested by the Editor based on the following concerns expressed by the constituencies:

• That the organization of RDA was too closely based on current database structures of linked bibliographic and authority records,
  when the ultimate aim is a relational / object-oriented database structure [ACOC].
  (See 5JSC/Editor/2 for details of the database implementation scenarios.)
• That organization of RDA is insufficiently aligned with Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) and Functional Requirements for Authority Data (FRAD) [ALA].
• That the inclusion of relationships between works and expressions in Part A, Chapter 7, is inappropriate [LC].

The new organization relates data elements more closely to both FRBR entities and user tasks.The existing Part A and Part B will be replaced by ten sections which fall into two groups, focusing on recording the attributes of each of the FRBR entities and on recording relationships between these entities, respectively:

Recording attributes

Section 1 – Recording attributes of manifestation and item
Section 2 – Recording attributes of work and expression
Section 3 – Recording attributes of person, family, and corporate body
Section 4 – Recording attributes of concept, object, event, and place

Recording relationships

Section 5 – Recording primary relationships between work, expression, manifestation, and item
Section 6 – Recording relationships to persons, families, and corporate bodies associated with a resource
Section 7 – Recording relationships to concepts, objects, events, and places associated with a work
Section 8 – Recording relationships between works, expressions, manifestations and items
Section 9 – Recording relationships between persons, families, and corporate bodies
Section 10 – Recording relationships between concepts, objects, events, and places

Each section will contain a chapter of general guidelines and chapters for the entities. Each chapter will be associated with one of the FRBR user tasks and one or more FRBR entities; for example, chapter 2 in section 1 will cover elements primarily used to identify a manifestation or item and chapter 19 in section 6 will cover elements primarily used to find a work. The chapters on recording attributes and relationships for the FRBR group 3 entities (concept, object, event, and place) will be placeholders, provided to allow a complete mapping to FRBR and FRAD and as a template for possible future development of RDA to cover these entities. Instructions on recording the attributes and relationships for places have been included,
but will not initially go beyond the scope of AACR2 chapter 23.

Very interesting! “Each chapter will be associated with one of the FRBR user tasks and one or more FRBR entities” sounds like a great approach, and completely different from AACR.