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).

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WoGroFuBiCo final report out: On the Record

Posted by: William Denton, 11 January 2008 7:19 am
Categories: Library of Congress

From the Library of Congress’s Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control, or WoGroFuBiCo as the world knows it now, comes the final version of the report the draft of which we all read in December: On the Record (441 KB PDF).

Janet Swan Hill, one of the WoGroFuBiCo leaders, sent this to AUTOCAT:

The LC Working Group is on the brink of submitting its final report to LC. Please note that the final tally was more than 100 single-spaced pages of comments from the public about the draft. We all read every comment, and every single one was considered.

Both arising from comments, and arising from the continuation of work we had already contemplated, the final report will contain some substantive changes from the draft, including some additional recommendations, and some modified recommendations.

The report may be available prior to your leaving for ALA. If so, I urge you to read it, and as you discuss it with your colleagues, be sure that you are both referring to the final report rather than to the draft.

Many comments had to do with people wishing or believing that the report was something that it is not. For example, the report is not an implementation plan, and so it did not contain recommendations regarding “how”, “when”, “in what order”, and “with what money.” Implementation comes AFTER the recommendation itself is accepted, and must be dealt with then. A newly-added executive summary contains some clarification about the scope and limitations of the report.

Similarly, some comments were received about matters that are outside the WG charge (for example the status of LC as not a national library). In these cases, the WG did a “reality check”, to determine whether indeed the matters did not belong in this report.

Many comments were received that had the WG saying “didn’t we say that?” or “we didn’t say that, did we?” and comments such as these had us re-examining our wording to make sure that it adequately conveyed what we intended.

Many thanks to everyone who took the time to read the draft and comment.

I haven’t yet checked if the FRBR-related recommendations changed.