The FRBR Blog

Here are the parts of the 30 November 2007 draft of the Report on the Future of Bibliographic Control that mention FRBR (slightly adjusted by converting footnotes into hyperlinks). I won’t be able to keep up with all of the discussion that’ll be going on over the next couple of weeks (while comments are accepted) and after, but I’ll link to what I can. Personally, I think the recommendations in 4.2 are very sensible, though they should be directed to All, not just the Library of Congress, IFLA, OCLC, and vendors. I don’t know enough about RDA (I haven’t been reading all the drafts) to have much of an opinion about 3.2.

4.2 Realization of FRBR

Since the 1998 publication of the final report of IFLA’s Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Record (FRBR) study, the FRBR framework has served as an international catalyst for reconceptualizing bibliographic data and bibliographic relationships. FRBR suggests alternatives for analyzing intellectual content for bibliographic control.

Recent data modeling exercises in library and other arenas (FRBR, CIDOC CRM, <indecs>) have provided sophisticated models that highlight important areas for attention. At the same time, the emergence of resource-oriented architectures in the Web environment has made the bibliographic community alert to the benefits of providing access to data resources using simple Web-based protocols and schema. The combination of these two strands suggests an important future direction for the Library of Congress and for Web-based, network-level bibliographic control. The Working Group envisions a bibliographic infrastructure wherein data about entities of interest (e.g., works, places, people, concepts, and chronological periods) are encoded in agreed-upon ways and made available through agreed-upon Web protocols for ready and efficient use by other applications and services. LC and the library community need to find ways of “releasing the value” of the rich historic investment in semantic data onto the Web.

System implementations experimenting with the FRBR “Work” concept to cluster materials in the user interface are proving the value of the model at the Work definition level. However, clustering at the Work level exercises only a minor part of the FRBR model, which redefines the full range of bibliographic entities and their relationships (e.g., creators, producers, and subjects). At the same time, the impact of the FRBR model on cataloging practice and on the machine-readable bibliographic record has not been extensively explored. There is no standard way to exchange Work-based data, and no cataloging rules that yet support the creation of records using the FRBR model.

The work of the Joint Steering Committee to ready RDA for publication in 2009 is using FRBR for guidance. Unfortunately, that means that RDA is being based on a framework that has not yet received substantial testing on live data, in real libraries, at scale. The Working Group feels strongly that until FRBR has been tested, it will not be possible to usefully evaluate its applicability in the context of RDA.

Consequences of Maintaining the Status Quo

The library community is basing its future cataloging rules on a framework that it has only barely begun to explore. Until carefully tested as a model for bibliographic data formation, FRBR must be seen as a theoretical model whose practical implementation and its attendant costs are still unknown.

Recommendations

4.2.1 Develop Test Plan for FRBR

4.2.1.1 LC, OCLC, IFLA Working Group, and Representative System Vendors: Identify what agreements are necessary to support Work-based views in bibliographic systems.

4.2.1.2 LC, OCLC, IFLA Working Group, and Representative System Vendors: Develop and agree upon a schema for the exchange of Work-based data.

4.2.1.3 LC, OCLC, IFLA Working Group, and Representative System Vendors: Clarify the status of the Expression entity and, if appropriate, carry out work similar to that described in 4.2.1.1 and 4.2.1.2 for that entity.

4.2.1.4 LC, OCLC, IFLA Working Group, and Representative System Vendors: Use the results of the above activity as the basis for promulgating and evaluating FRBR implementations.

Desired Outcomes

The study, refinement, and validation of FRBR will provide a more robust framework for the creation of the resource description and access rules that will be used in the future to support a broad range of relational searching options. The final product will be a bibliographic environment with clearly defined elements and relationships that can be used in a variety of bibliographic control situations.

And from earlier in the report:

3.2 Standards

… The standards processes for the library community take place in a variety of organizations which sometimes have overlapping participants. In particular, the FRBR and RDA initiatives are currently moving forward within different organizational structures—to the extent that they are moving forward. Because the Library of Congress is a major player in both efforts it could well use its influence to help coordinate these initiatives more closely and to introduce a stronger cost/benefit perspective into the work. Over and above our concerns about RDA development proceeding in parallel with FRBR and its related activities (themselves still evolving), the Working Group has additional concerns about RDA, including:

• the promised benefits of RDA are not discernable in the drafts seen to date;
• unclearness on how metadata created according to RDA will align with existing metadata;
• the business case for moving to RDA has not been made satisfactorily; and
• the financial implications (both actual and opportunity) of adoption in term of changes to workflow and supporting systems may prove considerable.

[Consequences section omitted]

Recommendations

3.2.1 Suspend Work on RDA

3.2.1.1 JSC: Suspend further new work on RDA until:

• more, large-scale testing of FRBR has been carried out against real cataloging data, and the results of those tests have been analyzed (see 4.2.1 below);
• the use and business cases for moving to RDA have been satisfactorily articulated; and
• the presumed benefits of RDA have been convincingly demonstrated.

3.2.1.2 LC, JSC, and DCMI: Work jointly to specify and commission exploratory work to model and represent a Bibliographic Description Vocabulary, drawing on the work of FRBR and RDA, the Dublin Core Abstract Model, and appropriate semantic Web technologies (e.g., SKOS). Some preparation for this work has already been done in joint discussion of JSC and DCMI.