Last Week in FRBR #39
The future of this site
FRBR, and to a lesser extended FRAD and FRSAR, and now fundamental parts of how we think about bibliographic information. When I started this blog in May 2005, there was nowhere on the Internet to keep up with what was going on in the FRBR world. Now FRBR is everywhere. The problem for most people is not how to keep up with the details, but how to know what’s most important.
I think the focus of this web site will change from posting a lot of news to being an up-to-date listing of key FRBR-related resources: standards, implementations, code, projects, references, books, talks, instructional material, and so on. Not a lot of all that, but the best and most relevant, so that if anyone ever needs to check on something, they can find a link here.
Let me know if you have any comments about this, if you think it’s a good idea, a bad idea, would like to help, or anything else.
Nelson and Cleary, FRBRizing an E-Library : Migrating from Dublin Core to FRBR and MODS
FRBRizing an E-Library : Migrating from Dublin Core to FRBR and MODS, by Jeremy Nelson and Alan Cleary, appeared in the most recent issue of the Code4Lib Journal.
Western State College in Gunnison, Colorado developed an open-source eCataloger Framework, based on Dublin Core metadata, on Google’s App Engine to manage and serve electronic resources to the library’s patrons. Pressed to find new solutions for failing manual workflows for serials and government document resource management, the eCataloger Framework was extended to FRBR to automate and enhance serials management and government documents receiving. Based on successfully FRBRizing the eCataloger, Western State College converted their e-Library management from Dublin Core to FRBR and MODS. This paper examines the processes of each of these implementations using Python, AJAX, and jQuery, the details of the FRBR data model, including using FRBRoo, and the successful user interface supported by a FRBRized catalog.
Here’s a little more on eCataloger, which as noted above runs on Google App Engine:
The eCataloger application provides cataloging utilities to create an eLibrary for an individual or small organization. The research goal of eCataloger is on creating semantic services for artifacts.
An eLibrary is a collection of electronic records used to organize and manage born digital resources (websites, ebooks, mp3) and as a meta-data proxy for books, magazines, physical video and audio, and other physical objects. The 1.1 release of the eCataloger, currently in an development beta, uses the FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) framework to model the records using data elements and concepts from the MODS (Metadata Object Description Schema), MARC, and other current and developing cataloging and metadata standards. By using FRBR as the descriptive framework, an overarching goal of the eCataloger is realized by being able to produce valid and well-formed MODS and MARC xml documents for interchange with existing and legacy library electronic systems. Because of the richness of the underlying FRBR data model, the eCataloger can be valid component in a larger semantic web ecology.
Ross Singer’s Open Library X-Identifier Service
Ross Singer created this Open Library X-Identifier Service with Open Library data. He explains:
This web service operates like OCLC’s X-Identifier or LibraryThing’s ThingISBN services, although it returns an RDF Graph representation from the data in the Open Library. Lookups can be done by ISBN (10 or 13), OCLC number, LCCN, Open Library edition ID or Open Library Work ID. It will return the FRBR Work set grouping for the requested resource. Responses can be provided in RDF/XML, RDF/JSON, NTriples or XML (RDF/XML sent with an “application/xml” content-type).
As an example, and in honour of Joe Gores, the great crime writer who died earlier this week, here’s 32 Cadillacs, identified by ISBN, viewed as RDF/XML.
If you’ve never read anything by Gores, try Interface.