The FRBR Blog

Assunção, FRBR and Music Uniform Title

Maria Clara Assunção has a paper called “FRBR and Music Uniform Title” in Páginas a & b 2:4 (2009), pp. 143-153.

The concepts of “work” and “expression” introduced by FRBR model, have particular implications for the rationale behind the construction of music uniform titles and can help to significantly improve the identification of musical works through this cataloguing resource. This study results from the practical need to establish a set of effective criteria in the development of uniform titles for musical works of a diverse nature, mostly of doubtful identification, often handwritten and sometimes anonymous. This paper aims to contribute to clarify this vital resource in the cataloguing of music but often avoided or misapplied.

LibraryThing, A FRBR Model of Publishers

I spent some time cleaning out my inbox. At work I’ve been doing Inbox Zero for a long time and it’s an enormous help, but my personal mailbox had a bunch of stuff in it that was dragging me down, so I started deleting. One thing I found was from Tim “Mr. LibraryThing” Spalding, sent in May 2009, pointing out a discussion on the LT site: A FRBR Model of of Publishers.

As many know, LibraryThing has a concept of “works” being composed of editions. And we have author and tag aliases.

Together, these concepts resemble what librarians call the FRBR model, and its siblings FRAR, FRSAR, FRBRoo, and FR-lama-lama-ding-dong.

Now, I want to do publishers. That is, I want to have pages for publishers.

This requires some model of how publishers are. An ideal model would understand that HarperCollins used to be called Harper Collins, that Collins is an imprint of HarperCollins, but was an independent company, etc. Truly publishers and imprints are much worse than authors or works. They’re a river you can’t step in twice and that calls itself a stream the next day. Also the river is only really significant insofar as books float down it. And there are beavers making dams, and fish and… Okay, not the last part.

So, does anyone have any advice on this problem? What does FRBR look like when applied to publishers, imprints and etc.?

I don’t know if this lead anywhere. To my surprise, even for the new Stephen King, Under the Dome, no publisher is listed in the Common Knowledge section. (It’s Scribner.) I had a look at a few books and didn’t see a Publisher field on any of them. I don’t know what’s going on there, or where Tim got with this, but that’s what happens when you let email sit around for eight months and then feel bad about not dealing with it.

Hillmann et al, RDA Vocabularies: Process, Outcome, Use

Diane Hillmann, Karen Coyle, Jon Phipps, and Gordon Dunsire have a paper in the new D-Lib: RDA Vocabularies: Process, Outcome, Use. Definitely look at this.

ABSTRACT: The Resource Description and Access (RDA) standard, due to be released this coming summer, has included since May 2007 a parallel effort to build Semantic Web enabled vocabularies. This article describes that effort and the decisions made to express the vocabularies for use within the library community and in addition as a bridge to the future of library data outside the current MARC-based systems. The authors also touch on the registration activities that have made the vocabularies usable independently of the RDA textual guidance. Designed for both human and machine users, the registered vocabularies describe the relationships between FRBR, the RDA classes and properties and the extensive value vocabularies developed for use within RDA.

Karen Coyle, RDA Vocabularies for a Twenty-First-Century Data Environment

Karen Coyle’s been busy. She had an excerpt from her upcoming issue of Library Technology Reports posted at the ALA Tech Source blog: RDA Vocabularies for a Twenty-First-Century Data Environment. They explain: “Karen Coyle is in the putting the finishing touches on the February issue of Library Technology Reports, titled “RDA Vocabularies for a Twenty-First-Century Data Environment”. In the following excerpt, she addresses the difficulty that many librarians have in understanding the basic concepts of FRBR, and offers some diagrams to clarify them. Though understanding FRBR may be tricky, she argues, it is essential to a transformation to a modern, workable data environment.”

RDA pricing

Speaking of Resource Description and Access, the cost of this new cataloguing standard was announced. It starts at $325 for the first user and then it’s about $50 for each extra user. Jennifer Eustis posted some details about what that gets you. I think RDA should be free.

The FRBR Family

Functional Requirements: the FRBR Family of Models is (I think?) a new page on the IFLA web site.

FRAD available in Chinese but not English

A Chinese translation of Functional Requirements for Authority Data has been posted on the IFLA web site. The original English expression of FRAD is available in a print manifestation, and will be available for download from IFLA, but it’s not up yet. Strange, but such, I think, are the workings of an international federation of library associations and institutions.

Murray, Re-Imagining the Bibliographic Universe

Updated link/file for Ronald Murray’s Re-Imagining the Bibliographic Universe: FRBR, Physics & the World Wide Web talk from November 2009. (That’s the 472-slider, but don’t be alarmed.)

Boer, MetaLex Naming Conventions and the Semantic Web

Rinke Hoekstra points out a paper by Alexander Boer in Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications, MetaLex Naming Conventions and the Semantic Web (DOI: 10.3233/978-1-60750-082-7-31). An excerpt from his explanation:

As an XML standard for legal sources (laws, court proceedings etc.) MetaLex has been around for some time now (developed by the University of Amsterdam in 2001), but the relatively new CEN MetaLex brings a significant overhaul of the original design. The new mechanism for specifying naming conventions is but one aspect of this. MetaLex names are used in self-identification of documents, citation of other documents, and inclusion of document components according to the FRBR levels of item, manifestation, expression and work….

This paper introduces the naming mechanism (which is quite intricate), and describes how the uniqueness of IRIs can be guaranteed by using a GRDDL transform for translating the property-value pairs encoded in the IRI to OWL class axioms (using nominals, and proper relations between the different FRBR levels). A DL classifier can then infer owl:sameAs relations between entities (individuals) described using the appropriate property value pairs.

Melgar, Topic Maps and Catalogues of Museums, Libraries and Archives

Topic Maps and Catalogues of Museums, Libraries and Archives, by Liliana Melgar.

The following case study is going to show examples of Topic Maps based projects especially for catalogues of museums, libraries or archives. The first part describes two projects using Topic Maps by implementing data with the FRBR-model. The second part of the study concentrates on another two projects that uses the Topic Map paradigm to integrate several catalogues.

(Via Catalogablog.)

Aalberg, Formats and FRBR Catalogues – Where’s Our Focus?

Speaking of topic maps, I came across Formats and FRBR Catalogues – Where’s Our Focus? It’s an undated presentation by Trond Aalberg. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here before.

JJR on the notion of a Work

JJR, in Newly Unemployed, in part mentions disagreements with RDA and FRBR:

I also have deep philosophical issues with FRBR, especially its notion of a “work” in the abtract, which drives me up the wall, as there is no such animal. There is always an Ur-Text somewhere. I’m just too much of a hard nosed materialist to buy the Platonic notions that FRBR seems grounded in.

Attitudes like that do not get you counted among library movers and shakers, regardless how true they might be.

Maybe not a Mover and Shaker, but definitely a Shover and Maker.