Hankinson, My FRBR Dilemma
Andrew Hankinson, a music PhD student at McGill in Montreal, Canada, posted My FRBR Dilemma t’other day.
I’ve been a big FRBR fan for a long time. In my cataloguing classes, I was adamant that AACR2 was the “old ‘n busted” while FRBR was “the new hotness.” If only, I posited, our data was in FRBR format. A library’s catalogue would become a berrypicker’s utopia, full of paths to be followed, relationships to be discovered and insight to be gained.
Lately, though, I’ve been having serious doubts.
His three objections — read the post for the explanations — are:
- Every item has its own “FRBR.”
- It’s unnatural.
- It has relationships, but not the right kind.