Work, expression, manifestation, item … blog.
A weblog following developments around the world in FRBR: Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records.
Maintained by William Denton, Web Librarian at York University. Suggestions and comments welcome at wtd@pobox.com.
Confused? Try What Is FRBR? (2.8 MB PDF) by Barbara Tillett, or Jenn Riley's introduction. For more, see the basic reading list.
Books: FRBR: A Guide for the Perplexed by Robert Maxwell (ISBN 9780838909508) and Understanding FRBR: What It Is and How It Will Affect Our Retrieval Tools edited by Arlene Taylor (ISBN 9781591585091) (read my chapter FRBR and the History of Cataloging).
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Over the next few days I’m going to work through an example of putting together some of the tools available by superduping and FRBRizing Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
To begin with, here’s a handy Ruby script to find free MARC records with Z39.50. I’m going to use an adapted version of this to get MARC records for all of the superduped ISBNs. I’ll post the binary MARC file for your own use, so you needn’t collect them yourself.
Here’s a quick example of how J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire looks when FRBRized. None of the links go anywhere, it’s incomplete, and it has no details about manifestations and nothing about items. It’s a rough example of a FRBRized bibliographic description of this particular work. Hover your mouse pointer over any of the links to see what the relationship is: is it a related work, an expression, a manifestation, or what. I’ve grouped some expressions together to make it easier to navigate. It’s a quick hack, but leave a comment or suggestion if you have one. I’ll improve it.
We need more examples, more things to point at and say, “Here’s why FRBR will make things better.”. Do one of your own and let me know about it and I’ll link to it. What would a library catalogue interface to this book look like? An online bookstore? What if someone wants to borrow the first available copy and they don’t care what edition? Would there be a “Reserve first available copy” button? What if they want the first available large print edition but don’t care if it’s hardcover or paperback?
I was going to do a Lord of the Rings example based on the 2006 FRBR Challenge, but that got complicated right off because of the work-within-a-work nature of the three books in the trilogy.