The FRBR Blog

Riley, What Do You Want Out of a FRBRized Data Service

Jenn Riley asked What do you want out of a FRBRized data web service? on the code4lib mailing list Tuesday.

At Indiana University we’re working on a project that will help us see concretely what FRBRized [1] library data and discovery systems might look like. [2] One of our project goals is to share the raw FRBRized data widely so that others can look at it to see how it’s structured, reuse it, improve on it, comment on the FRBRization effectiveness, etc. We’re planning on allowing remote/Web Services/API/SRU/some machine-to-machine method like that access to the data. As we’re starting to think about how we should set that up, we thought it would be useful to gather some use cases from the code4lib community, as it’s the folks here that are experimenting services like this. So if there were FRBRized data available to you (at least for FRBR group 1 and group 2 entities; *maybe* group 3 as well), what would you do with it? What kinds of questions would your service (discovery system, whatever) ask a service that made this data available? What kinds of information would you want in a response? Would you have uses that called for downloading of “all” data at once or would you instead be better off with real-time queries to a web service? It’s questions like that we’re interested in brainstorming with this group about.

Read the rest of the thread for follow-up discussion.

David Bigwood, FRBR a Dead End?

David Bigwood posted FRBR a Dead End? on his cataloguing blog Catalogablog about cataloguing. He’d been to a conference and came away thinking: “One thing that hit me over the head was that FRBR might be a poor model for our data.” Read the comments, from Shawne Miksa, Jonathan Rochkind, Ed Summers, Ross Singer, and some other usual suspects.

Dueber and Rochkind on data models

There was a long thread on ngc4lib that got into a discussion of data models with a lot about FRBR coming up, but I can’t find it in the archives. I can still point to some related blog posts that came out the mailing list talk, though:

• Jonathan Rochkind, Serialization vs Metadata Schema/Vocabulary: “RDA _theoretically_ uses FRBR (rather than ISBD) as the referenced ‘metadata schema’. This to my mind is actually the _most important_ part of RDA, the problem is that the RDA effort didn’t really realize how important and how challenging this was, they didn’t really realize what it entailed, and didn’t take it seriously — perhaps until fairly recently.”
• Bill Dueber, Data Structures and Serializations: “Anyone advocating or dismissing a data model based on the data structure or serialization most-often associated with that model is missing the goddamn point.”

ELAG workshop on FRBR, June in Helsinki

Discovery interfaces 2: FRBR and identifiers working group, a workshop by Jennifer Gatenby, is scheduled for the European Library Automation Group’s 2010 conference in Helsinki in June. I hope this gets recorded, or at least that slides go up.

Resource discovery relies on persistent and well diffused identifiers. Related to discovery is access and rights management and they too rely on persistent identifiers. The aim of the workshop is to discuss the identifiers that relate to resources and their creators and how well they fit the FRBR model. What proactive roles should libraries be playing in relation to identifiers, their maintenance and diffusion?

Many identifiers will be considered. Among those at the work level are the ISTC (International standard text code), OWI (OCLC work identifier), ISWC (Musical works), ISAN (Audio-visual works) and OWI. At the manifestation level there are ISBN, ISSN, ISMN (music) v-ISAN, DOI, Handle, ARK, LC and other national bibliography identifiers and the OCN (OCLC control number). For creators, there is the new draft International standard ISNI and the emergent ORCID (Open Research Contributor Identifier).

Tasks for the workshop will include examining the existing identifier landscape and its completeness, examining the role of identifiers in discovery and in linking data.

Carol ?, MARC, FRBR, and a Whole New World

From MARC, FRBR and a Whole New World, a blog post from someone probably named Carol.

Recently after a very basic copy cataloging course, a student asked me if it was ok if she added the electronic version of an item to the bibliographic record for the print, even when they are not exactly the same edition. This is not the first time this question has come up and I doubt it will be the last. I told her that technically, no. This is not sanctioned by The Powers That Be. However, if it works in her library catalog and the patrons like it and the other librarians like it – why not? I emphasized that this would be a Big No-No if she was adding the record to OCLC or selling it but if it is in her library, in her catalog, she can do whatever she needs to do to help her patrons – this is pretty much the point of the catalog.

… At an ALA session in the recent few years (I think it was 2008 Anaheim), John Estes from VTLS stood up and spoke of “super” records. It was the most brilliant thing I’d heard from an established ILS in a very long time. He demonstrated how they basically ‘bumped’ up the generic data that applied across all instances of an item and then hooked the non-generic information to it in a cool way. To put it in FRBR terms, they create an Expression then hook the Manifestations to it (with the Items hooked to the Manifestations). BRILLIANT! This would solve the dilemma of ‘how do I connect my electronic and print versions into one record?’.

Knowledge Integration

I’m not sure what’s going on at http://developer.k-int.com/svn/default/sandbox/frbr_rel_model/trunk/src/main/java/org/frbr/datamodel/ … except that it’s a FRBR datamodel defined in Java, stored in Subversion, wrapped in an enigma, and covered in a delicious milk chocolate coating.

Krichel, Introduction to Knowledge Organization

Thomas Krichel is teaching LIS 512, Introduction to Knowledge Organization, at Long Island University. The second week in January was about FRBR. Getting things off to a good start!

McGrath, Looking for advice for project to tranform MARC bib data into work records

Kelley McGrath sent Looking for advice for project to tranform MARC bib data into work records to the code4lib mailing list last week. (If you think mailing lists are dead and everything happens on blogs, you’re wrong.)

I am hoping someone can help me with my current conundrum. I am looking for recommendations for tools and methods for a project I am working on to try to implement some of the Online Audiovisual Catalogers (OLAC) work on FRBR works and moving images (http://www.olacinc.org/drupal/?q=node/27). I am not a programmer or coder, but we are going to have to hire someone to do this and give them some direction. So I am interested in what tools you would recommend for this purpose and why, as well as any other advice anyone can give me.

Basically what we want to do is take a large number of MARC bibliographic records for moving images, extract the information that might describe the FRBR Work and parse and normalize it. We then want to use this data to create provisional Work records. I am not so worried about getting the data out of MARC, but about how to work with the data once it’s out. I have listed the main steps we anticipate needing in broad outlines below.

Check the thread to see the replies; drop McGrath a note if you can help.

Dublin Core Metadata Initiative news

The March 2010 status report from the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative is a nice update. I admire projects that do updates like this. There’s some FRBR and FRAD news because of the Resource Description and Access work being done.

DCMI/RDA Task Group

The DCMI RDA Task Group has continued to be busy finalizing the registration of the RDA Element sets and vocabularies. The completion date has been postponed to the first half of 2010 following the rescheduled release date of June 2010 for RDA, to be called the RDA Toolkit. The Task Group is currently discussing the generalization of RDA elements for use by the wider community.

“RDA vocabularies: process, outcome, use” by Diane Hillmann, Karen Coyle, Jon Phipps, and Gordon Dunsire was published in D-Lib Magazine vol.16 no.1/2 (January/February 2010). It describes some of the challenges encountered in the registration work and the solutions adopted.

Jon Phipps, Karen Coyle and Diane Hillmann gave a presentation on application profiles to the ALCTS (Association for Library Collections & Technical Services) Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access (CC:DA) on January 18, 2010 during its Midwinter Meeting. The presentation used the Task Group work to illustrate various points.

Diane Hillmann continues to represent DCMI on the advisory board of the Vocabulary Mapping Framework (VMF) project. The first versions of the VMF matrix were released in November 2009. The matrix is a tool for automatically computing best-fit mappings between bibliographic metadata elements, and consists of RDF triples in the TTL format representing around 2,500 role and 11,500 relator concepts, with over 800 terms mapped from third-party vocabularies including RDA and Dublin Core. The matrix and further information about VMF are available here. Gordon Dunsire is a member of the core project team.

The Task Group continues to liaise with the the FRBR Review Group which maintains the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) and Functional Requirements for Authority Data (FRAD) models. The Review Group is discussing a draft registration of the entity-relationship model of FRBR.

Work has started on the registration of the FRAD model. The Task Group will discuss mapping the FRBR and FRAD elements used by RDA, and registered as part of the RDA element sets, with the FRBR and FRAD element sets when their registration is finalized.

Tillett, RDA Changes from AACR2 for Texts

Barbara Tillett’s webcast Library of Congress talk RDA Changes from AACR for Texts was done on 12 January 2010 but I just found out about it these week, thanks to a mention from Ed Summers.

As the United States begins to prepare to test the new cataloging code, RDA: Resource Description and Access, this presentation explores the changes from AACR2 (Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2nd ed.) that the new code brings. The focus of this presentation is a brief overview of the changed instructions for cataloging textual materials. The presentation lasts 41 minutes, and the Q&A session afterward runs 35 minutes.

Resource Description and Access in South Africa, 2009

On the RDA-L mailing list Pat Riva pointed out Resource Description and Access in South Africa, a one-day conference in July 2009. The opening talk is by Robert Maxwell, who wrote FRBR: A Guide for the Perplexed, and then a talk about FRBR by Madely du Preez and one about FRAD by Fiona Bell.

What do you want in the Open Library Works API?

In Works API, sent to the code4lib mailing list, Karen Coyle asks:

Open Library now has Works defined, and is looking to develop an API for their retrieval. It makes obvious sense that when a Work is retrieved via the API, that the data output would include links to the Editions that link to that Work. Here are a few possible options:

1. Retrieve Work information (author, title, subjects, possibly reviews, descriptions, first lines) alone
2. Retrieve Work information + OL identifiers for all related Editions
3. Retrieve Work information + OL identifiers + any other identifiers related to the Edition (ISBN, OCLC#, LCCN)
4. Retrieve Work information and links to Editions with full text / scans

Well, you can see where I’m going with this. What would be useful?

Reply on the list, or e-mail Karen Coyle, with your answer.

In a follow-up message Coyle gives this immortal line (to Ed Summers): “I’ll need you to be a little more -v on this one.”

More from lengthy code4lib thread

A couple more things from Variations/FRBR project relases FRBR XML Schemas, a long thread on the code4lib mailing list. Karen Coyle said in one message something that caught my eye (not surprising — most of her e-mails have something like that):

One thing I am finding about FRBR (and want to think about more) is that one seems to come up with different conclusions depending on whether one works down from Work or works up from Item. The assumption that an aggregate in a bound volume is an Expression seems to make sense if you are working up from the Manifestation, but it makes less sense if you are working down from the Work. If decisions change based on the direction, then I think we have a real problem!

Matthew Beacom replied in part:

The direction one moves in with the WEMI/IMEW model doesn’t change the of using the model in the way you mean. It doesn’t invalidates the model or shows a serious problem with the model. It shows that people can often trace complexities of relationships in one direction better than they can in another. So it is a good practice to use the model in both directions when trying to understand it or apply it.

That’s the opening of a long and thoughtful post. If you missed some of the thread, work your way through. It seems to have died now so there is an end.

OAI-ORE and FRBR

Pointer to FRBR, a message on the OAI-ORE mailing list

Given the 1:M relationships between FRBR group 1 entities, if I want to completely model a FRBR hierarchy for a work in OAI-ORE, I need at least 4 resource maps: 1 work-level resource map to aggregate expressions, an expression-level map for aggregating manifestations, a manifestation-level resource map to aggregate items and at least 1 item-level resource map to aggregate the actual content for a particular item.

For games where there are significant issues around editions (and there’s a lot of those in the world), this actually works as a pretty good way to model things, making it easy to add new resource maps for particular editions/revisions, new copies of items, etc. as they come along. But there are some games where the situation is much simpler, and there’s not a lot of reason to have work/expression/manifestation resource maps around, because all I have is one item and that’s all I’m likely to ever have.

In those cases, how evil would it be of me to have an item-level resource map indicate that it is aggregated by manifestation/expression/work aggregations that actually don’t have resource maps?

You’ll be glad to know that according to the one person who replied, it wouldn’t be evil. Whew!

DOMS Project

DOMS, the Digital Object Management System (built on Fedora) has some FRBR stuff on its web site: FRBR Relations, How to Use FRBR.

Ibbo, A Generic JPA realisation of the FRBR Model?

I don’t know what JPA is, but Ian Ibbo posted A Generic JPA Realisation of the FRBR Model?

After a couple of hours hacking on saturday I arrived at a point that needed some test data. What to reuse? I figured I could just throw together my usual collection of cybernetics books and use that. What data model? FRBR is getting some air-time at the moment. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just pick up a JPA definition of the FRBR model and drop it into your project? I thought so.. But a look around didn’t yield anything I could reuse. Since my test data really only needs work/creator at the moment, I’ve created some classes under org.frbr.datamodel, pasted a GNU affero license on it, and whacked it out there in the public domain. Think maybe this needs to live at sourceforge, but I don’t fancy going through the hell of that just for giggles. The sourcecode is here for now: http://developer.k-int.com/svn/default/sandbox/frbr_rel_model (Can be svn checked out from this address too). If this is something of interest, prod me and I’ll get it up on sourceforge and share out the permissions.

Yelton, In Which FRBR Clarifies My Thinking on Citation Styles

Last week Andromeda Yelton posted In Which FRBR Clarifies My Thinking on Citation Styles.

Back when electronic content was starting to explode, lots of citation styles were getting all persnickety about how to cite the electronic vs. the paper version of different things, and which database it came from, and all this crud. And I was thinking, why? Do I care? Does it really matter where I found an article? What possible way does its provenance matter to my argument?

In other words, I’m really not interested in item- or manifestation-level citations. The kind of arguments I make — the kind of arguments people in most disciplines, I think, make — are expression-level, caring only about the content in question and not the particular form in which it’s realized.

edsu and ostephens

There was a bit of interesting stuff between Owen Stephens and Ed Summers on Twitter, where they had a short exchange about what was expressed by Work-level information in Open Library. Summers used a command-line RDF tool to investigate. I wanted to show the exchange here. I had Stephens’s Twitter page in a tab, but after restarting Firefox a couple of times it all got lost and it would take me too long to go back and find it all. How can someone easily go back and track a Twitter exchange between two people that happened a week ago?