FRBR Review Group meeting 2
Late in the afternoon two days ago, Wednesday 13 August, was the second meeting of the FRBR Review Group here at IFLA 2008. I had to work on some unexpected stuff with a York colleague so I missed the first half hour of the meeting. When I arrived, back in the same room as the first meeting and the FRSAR meeting had been and the WG on Aggregates meeting would be, there were six people at the table (Patricia Riva chair) and fifteen observers.
They were talking about FRBRoo, “F - R - B - R - O - O” as most of them called it, but “furburroo” as I call it. A few scattered points I jotted down :
- Something (I missed what) in FRBRoo means that until at least one expression exists, the work does not exist. That clarifies an existing philosophical problem.
- Riva noted that really all manifestations are aggregates: the dust jacket design, the author photograph, etc., are all additions to the core. (The relative importance of those additions is another matter, as the Working Group on Aggregates discussed the next day.)
- In the FRBRoo mappings, Corporate Body in FRBR is matched up with Group in CRM. They are different, though, and some things are groups that aren’t considered corporate bodies in the library world. Something may get subclassed.
- There was more discussion about FRBRoo, remaining work to be done, what will happen next, etc. and general agreement that it, and object orientation, are not simple to understand.
- They will look into the possibility of working with the archives community.
- Riva pointed out something that Robert Maxwell noted in his book. The definition of the Person entity (3.2.5 in FRBR) says, “For the purposes of this study persons are treated as entities only to the extent that they are involved in the creation or realization of a work (e.g., as authors, composers, artists, editors, translators, directors, performers, etc.), or are the subject of a work (e.g., as the subject of a biographical or autobiographical work, of a history, etc.).” According to that there’s no place for a Person as producer of a Manifestation or owner of an Item. Corporate Body has the same note. There seemed to be general agreement that this was wrong.
- Maja Žumer pointed out that FRBR, FRAD, and FRSAR don’t or won’t all perfectly match up. People who implement them will find problems. How to keep up with all of that? Things are in flux, but people are getting on and building FRBR implementations even though there are known problems and some work still being done. Some discussion about that. There are organizational issues within IFLA about who reports to who and ho the different groups are organized and which reports to what.
More to come about the Working Group on Aggregates meeting the next day.