The FRBR Blog

Virginia Dudley wrote a book review of Maxwell’s FRBR: A Guide for the Perplexed and Taylor’s Understanding FRBR: What It Is and How It Will Affect Our Retrieval Tools in Library Resources & Technical Services 52: 3 (July 2008).

She concludes:

I would recommend both of these books to any librarian who wants to learn more about FRBR. Maxwell’s comprehensive overview is the stronger of the two, and would be an excellent starting place. Although Understanding FRBR has some weak areas, it does have many fine chapters, and overall it contributes important insights into the conceptual model we call FRBR.

I just not noticed that Galen Charlton posted ALA 2008 Conference Notes: ALCTS FRBR Interest Group on the LibLime Developers’ Blog on 27 June 2008, just over a month ago. LibLime, you may recall, are a company that works on Koha, the open source integrated library system, and sells support for it.

It’s a nice full report, so go have a look. John Espley of VTLS and Jennifer Bowen, who’s on the eXtensible Catalog project, spoke.

This morning I went to the meeting of the FRBR Interest Group at the American Library Association (ALA) conference in Anaheim, California. For those who like lots of acronyms, the interest group is a part of the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS), a division of ALA.

… VTLS has started an experiment to offer Virtua’s FRBRization tools in the form of software as a service (SaaS). A library would send VTLS an extract of all of their bib records. VTLS would then determine which subset of the records would most benefit from FRBRization, then create a Virtua database with the FRBRized set of bibs. The library could then set up their OPAC to link from bib records to the work-sets stored in the Virtua database. That would allow a patron to find a bib for a paperback edition of Tom Sawyer and click on a link to see a list of all editions of that work that the library has. From the work-set page, the patron could in turn travel to one of the individual bibs.

Roberto Sturman sent this to the FRBR mailing list this morning:

The IFPA2 (ISIS FRBR Prototype Application – ver. 2) is now online:

http://pclib3.ts.infn.it:8080/ifpa2/

(username/password for dataentry: ifpa2/demo2)

The new implementation of the prototype is based on WebLis
(http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=16841&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html).

Its main features are:

• new database design: relationships are managed in dedicated records, one relationship per record;
• unlimited no. of relationships for each Entity (within the database capability);
• creation of Entities/Relationships by hyperlinks; picklist assisted relationship management;
• WEB based interface for all functions, data entry included;
• pseudo-tree view of FRBR bibliographic “towers”

Please note as the user interface design is still in fluctuation and the application has still many bugs, inconsistencies, so it is not yet available for download. I hope to make it downloadable shortly.

Timothy J. Dickey, “FRBRization of a Library Catalog: Better Collocation of Records, Leading to Enhanced Search, Retrieval, and Display.” Information Technology and Libraries 27:1 (March 2008)

The Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR)’s hierarchical system defines families of bibliographic relationship between records and collocates them better than most extant bibliographic systems. Certain library materials (especially audio-visual formats) pose notable challenges to search and retrieval; the first benefits of a FRBRized system would be felt in music libraries, but research already has proven its advantages for fine arts, theology, and literature—the bulk of the non-science, technology, and mathematics collections. This report will summarize the benefits of FRBR to nextgeneration library catalogs and OPACs, and will review the handful of ILS and catalog systems currently operating with its theoretical structure. Editor’s note: This article is the winner of the LITA/ Ex Libris Writing Award, 2007.

I mentioned this paper last year when it won the award. Congratulations again to Timothy Dickey!

Ying Zhang and Yuelin Li, A User-Centered Functional Metadata Evaluation of Moving Image Collections, Journal of the American Society for Information Science 59:8, March 2008.

ABSTRACT: In this article, the authors report a series of evaluations of two metadata schemes developed for Moving Image Collections (MIC), an integrated online catalog of moving images. Through two online surveys and one experiment spanning various stages of metadata implementation, the MIC evaluation team explored a user-centered approach in which the four generic user tasks suggested by IFLA FRBR (International Association of Library Associations Functional Requirement for Bibliographic Records) were embedded in data collection and analyses. Diverse groups of users rated usefulness of individual metadata fields for finding, identifying, selecting, and obtaining moving images. The results demonstrate a consistency across these evaluations with respect to (a) identification of a set of useful metadata fields highly rated by target users for each of the FRBR generic tasks, and (b) indication of a significant interaction between MIC metadata fields and the FRBR generic tasks. The findings provide timely feedback for the MIC implementation specifically, and valuable suggestions to other similar metadata application settings in general. They also suggest the feasibility of using the four IFLA FRBR generic tasks as a framework for user-centered functional metadata evaluations.

I just got around to listening to Karen Coyle‘s talk at Code4Lib 2008: R & D: Can Resource Description Become Rigorous Data? It’s a great talk: she knows her stuff, enjoys a bit of sarcasm, and has important things to say. FRBR comes up here and there throughout her talk. Like the other talks at the conference, it was recorded, and the video is available at the Internet Archive.

Jenn Riley, the Inquiring Librarian, sent this around to some mailing lists yesterday. I’ve added in all the hyperlinks.

The Indiana University Variations2 and Variations3 projects use a work-based metadata model for discovery of musical sound recordings, scanned score images, and encoded score notation files. This model has been described as “FRBR-like” and is mentioned in various discussions of FRBR-based systems, but it is not technically a FRBR implementation.

As the project team investigates long-term sustainability issues for the Variations3 software, we have begun thinking about what a truly FRBR-ized version of the metadata model would look like, and if changing to this type of model would make our system more sustainable and interoperable. In September 2007 we released a report interpreting the FRBR Group 1 entities and their attributes for musical materials. Now, in July 2008, we have completed a second, follow-on report looking at the FRBR Group 2 and 3 entities and FRAD, and how they apply to musical materials. The report is available from our project news page: http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/projects/variations3/updates.html.

As seen on Cataloging Futures, two Library of Congress webcasts of Barbara Tillett (who works there, she’s chief of the Cataloging Policy and Support Office) talking about Resource Description and Access:

• Resource Description and Access: Background / Overview (67 minutes, recorded 14 May 2008): “RDA (Resource Description and Access), the next generation cataloging code designed for the digital environment, is under development. This presentation provides background on its development and a general overview of the conceptual models, international principles, and structure of this new code.”
• Cataloging Principles and RDA: Resource Description and Access (49 minutes, recorded 10 June 2008): “The second in a series on RDA: Resource Description and Access, the next generation cataloging code designed for the digital environment. This presentation deals with the cataloging principles that have influenced the development of RDA; the challenges they present to the international sharing of bibliographic and authority data; and the challenges they present to the developers of RDA.”

Worth following LC webcasts aimed at librarians and archivists. Tim “Mr. LibraryThing” Spalding, the Zotero dudes, Erik Hatcher of Solr renown, David Weinberger, Jennifer Bowen, Deanna Marcum, Karen Coyle, hey, even my former library school dean Brian Cantwell Smith, they’re all there.

Now time for a bit of geekery so I keep up some Planet Code4Lib cred.

I’d rather listen to these talks than watch them, so I’ll do what I did with the WoGroFuBiCo webcast: use a couple of Unix programs to convert a RealAudio video to MP3. Here’s what I’ll do to listen to the Zotero talk with Dan Cohen and Trevor Owens:

First, I’ll look in the launch in a new window link for the video src link: rtsp://rmserv1.loc.gov/avloc03/070611ssc1330.rm URL. Those rtsp links are what I want. They may be linked directly on the page.

Next, run the streaming video through mplayer and strip out the audio and save it to a WAV file, then convert that to a low-fidelity MP3:

$ mplayer rtsp://rmserv1.loc.gov/avloc03/070611ssc1330.rm \
-ao pcm:file=zotero.wav
$ lame -b 32 zotero.wav zotero.mp3

If you have mplayer and lame you should be able to do the same, but getting them installed is up to you, I’m afraid.

Martha Yee, Ph.D.,
Uploads very generously
Though Martha Yee is not a bee
Nor any similar entity

Can Martha Yee be said to be
Influenced by Lubetzky
Sitting in a library
Bibliographically?

La dee dee, one two three
Martha, Martha Yee
DDC or LCC
Martha, Martha Yee

• “Integration of Nonbook Materials in AACR2.” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 1983; 3:1-18. http://repositories.cdlib.org/postprints/3097
• “Attempts to Deal With the Crisis in Cataloging at the Library of Congress in the 1940′s.” Library Quarterly 1987 Jan; 57:1-31. http://repositories.cdlib.org/postprints/3116
• “What is a Work?” In: The Principles and Future of AACR: Proceedings of the International Conference on the Principles and Future Development of AACR, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, October 23-25, 1997. Ed., Jean Weihs. Ottawa: Canadian Library Association; Chicago: American Library Association, 1998: 62-104. http://repositories.cdlib.org/postprints/3085
• “Editions: Brainstorming for AACR2000.” In: The Future of the Descriptive Cataloging Rules: Papers from the ALCTS Preconference, AACR2000, American Library Association Annual Conference, Chicago, June 22, 1995. Ed., Brian E.C. Schottlaender. (ALCTS Papers on Library Technical Services and Collections, no. 6) Chicago: American Library Association, 1998: 40-65. http://repositories.cdlib.org/postprints/3086
• “Viewpoints: One Catalog or No Catalog?” ALCTS Newsletter 1999; 10:4:13-17. http://repositories.cdlib.org/postprints/3084
• “Lubetzky’s Work Principle.” In: The Future of Cataloging: Insights from the Lubetzky Symposium, April 18, 1998, University of California, Los Angeles. Ed., Tschera Harkness Connell, Robert L. Maxwell. Chicago: American Library Association, 2000. http://repositories.cdlib.org/postprints/3083

Cyril Connolly!?

At the big American Library Association conference in California a couple of weeks ago there was a well-attended session called Getting Ready for RDA and FRBR: What You Need to Know. The indefatigable Barbara Tillett (Library of Congress) and Glenn Patton (OCLC) were there, and Barbara Bushman (National Library of Medicine) filled in for Shawne Miksa who couldn’t make it. That blog post has some background information on all three and links to some useful things if you’re new to it all. There’s more on this page that has links to all slides and so on from conference presentations but you’ll have to scroll down a bit to the right section.

You Know FRBR, But Have You Ever Met FRAD was the next day, Sunday 29 June. Glenn Patton spoke again, as did Ed Jones (National University Library), and Athena Salaba (Kent State) and Lois Mai Chan (University of Kentucky) talked about FRSAR (Functional Requirements for Subject Authority Records). Slides are also available but again you’ll have to scroll down a bit or just search the page for FRAD.

I wish there were audio recordings of these talks!