The FRBR Blog

Rick Block of Columbia University gave a talk on 4 November: The Battle of RDA: Victors or Victims. (It’s quite similar to an April talk I linked to: RDA: Boondoggle or Boon? And What About MARC?)

Even with just the slides I think it’ll give you a good idea of what’s going on with Resource Description and Access and the debate over it, which I must admit I haven’t been following much.

(Question: Why is there a link to upgrademaster.com at the bottom of the RDA home page? Did they get hacked? Strange.)

Resource Description and Access Happy Fun Time Companion.

Yeah. I know.

New article in Library Resources and Technical Services 53:3 (July 2009): “How the Current Draft of RDA Addresses the Cataloging of Reproductions, Facsimiles, and Microforms,” by Steven A. Knowlton.

Abstract: The cataloging of microforms and other reproductions has been difficult throughout the history of cataloging codes, particularly due to the “multiple versions problem.” The proposed new cataloging code, Resource Description and Access (RDA), seeks to clarify the relationship between reproductions and originals by applying the principles of Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) to cataloging. While the use of FRBR principles does help to identify the relationships between works in the catalog, RDA as currently designed is challenging for the cataloger and includes many data that may prove to be difficult for catalog users to understand.

Some FRBR and FRAD-related stuff was posted by the Resource Description and Access people that you’ll want to look at.

First, in the Scope and Principles section of the RDA site there are updated mappings from FRBR and FRAD to RDA and back. They go through all of the RDA elements and tell you which FRBR entities, attributes and/or relationships they match. Important stuff.

Second, at RDA Online, which is where the actual commercial online RDA system will be, they’ve posted a new set of entity-relationship diagrams for the FRBR entities that are more visual: look up Manifestation or Concept, for example, and they’ll tell you all of the attributes those entities have, where they come from in FRBR, and what RDA elements those match. These diagrams don’t cover the relationships betweem the different entities, but there’s a placeholder so I expect they’ll come along soon.

Combined, extremely useful stuff for anyone digging into RDA, and also for anyone thinking about FRBR implementations and piggybacking on what RDA is putting in place. RDA will be a commercial product, though, and I worry about that and what effect it will have.

Catching up on something from last month: Sharing Standards for Bibliographic Data Worldwide: An Overview of Changes in Cataloguing Practices, a talk by Barbara Tillett at the Atlantic Provinces Library Association Conference 2009 in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Built on foundations established by the Anglo-American CataloguingRules (AACR), RDA (Resouce Description and Access) will provide a comprehensive set of guidelines and instructions on resource description and access covering all types of content and media. The new standard is being developed for use primarily in libraries, but consultations are being undertaken with othercommunities (archives, museums, publishers, etc.) in an effort to attain an effective level of alignment between RDA and the metadata standards used in those communities, increasing the ability to share metadata among diverse communities. Cataloguers aren’t the only professionals who will be affected by these new rules. Increasing the ability to share metadata outside of our own organizations and changing description and access rules will impact the entire information profession. Along with providing an overview of RDA and its underlying conceptual model (FRBR- Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records), examples of how FRBR can benefit circulation, reference and serials will be explored.

Laurel Tarulli says it was a very good talk:

Not only did she explain RDA and FRBR in a way that made complete sense (and I’ve been to other RDA sessions), but she also touched on how this is something the entire profession needs to be paying attention to, not just cataloguers. This is interesting because, up until now, many librarians have brushed it aside as a cataloguing issue. Not so! How information is retrieved, what it will retrieve and how it is presented will all change. The relationship gathering is what really excites me. And, it should excite all librarians in and out of the cataloguing department.

A FRBRy one-day preconference before the 2009 American Library Association conference is scheduled. Description taken from this PDF:

RDA, FRBR, and FRAD: Making the Connection

Friday, July 10, 8:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

This pre-conference concentrates on the role of the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) and the Functional Requirements for Authority Data (FRAD) in Resource Description and Access (RDA). The necessity of understanding these new conceptual foundations is key to the transition to the future cataloging environment. Participants will hear from a panel of experts on FRBR and FRAD attributes and relationships, new terminology and concepts, and participate in practical hands-on exercises.

Speakers: Barbara Tillett, Chief, Cataloging Policy and Support Office, Library of Congress; Robert Maxwell, Metadata & Special Collection Cataloging Dept Chair, Brigham Young University; Tom Delsey, RDA Editor, JSC; Glenn Patton, Director, WorldCat Quality Management, OCLC

Tickets: Advance: ALA Member, $249;

ALCTS Division/RT Member, $199; Non-Member, $289; Student, $99

Onsite: ALA Member, $299; ALCTS Division/RT Member, $249; Non-Member, $339; Student, $99

Event Code: AS4

Via e-mail John F. Myers sent to AUTOCAT. Sounds like there’ll be a lot of RDA on the agenda at the ALA.

E-mail announcement from Nathalie Schulz sent to the rda-l mailing list:

News from the Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA:

• Finalization of RDA text: The RDA text was handed to the co-publishers on schedule on 22 June. RDA is scheduled to be released at the end of November 2009.
• New Chair: Alan Danskin will be the JSC Chair from 1 July 2009. Danskin is the Metadata and Bibliographic Standards Coordinator at the British Library.
• During July, the JSC Secretariat will move to the British Library: jscsecretary@bl.uk
• Web site: The JSC Web site has moved to http://www.rda-jsc.org/. There are redirections in place from the old site to pages on the new site explaining the change.

I haven’t been keeping up with everything about Resource Description and Access, the new cataloguing rules, because there’s an awful lot going on and I find it a bit confusing. When it’s done and released then we can, I hope, all see how it implements FRBR and how we can use it. I think access will be by subscription only, though. Perhaps things like the RDF schemas, which will be public, will be enough.

From Rules to Entities: Cataloguing with RDA, a one-day workshop, is happening today in Montreal, Canada. It’s organized by the Technical Services Interest Group of the Canadian Library Association. Among the speakers are Pat Riva, chair of the FRBR Review Group, and Tom Delsey, who played a large role in creating FRBR.

The whole event is being webcast and you can watch it (rather, listen to it — the video isn’t working) today, free and without registration, or later, because it will be archived.

Alistair Miles sent Initial Release (M1-alpha2) of LOC Data as RDF using RDA and FRBR Schemas to the DC-RDA mailing list yesterday:

Dear all,

I’ve been working on a conversion of the loc marc data from scriblio to rdf using the rda and frbr schemas, and have got as far as I can with the effort I can spare at the moment. I set up a google code project to manage the work at:

[1] http://code4rda.googlecode.com

and have an alpha release of some of the loc data, described further at:

[2] http://code.google.com/p/code4rda/wiki/MilestoneOne

This is still well short of the initial scope proposed at [2] for a first milestone, based on the most prevalent features in the loc dataset, but will nevertheless hopefully serve as an initial proof of principle, and a base from which others can build.

I’ve added diane hillman and ed summers as project owners to [1], I leave it to them to decide best how to take this work forward.

Unfortunately I’m going to be rather busy for the next couple of months, and may not have much time to follow up on this work. However if anyone finds any serious issues in the loc data then do let me know, I’ll do what I can to fix them.

Best wishes,

Alistair

Two from Diane Hillmann with brief mentions of FRBR amidst much about Resource Description and Access:

• Show Me the Data!: “I was reminded of this when hearing a developer (who shall remain nameless) say recently that ‘of course you’d never show anyone the FRBR structure’ in an RDA based system. ‘Why the hell not?’ I responded.”
• Getting There (to be published in the January/February 2009 issue of Technicalities): “MARBI (the MARC standards advisory body) entertained some small proposals to make adjustments to MARC to accommodate RDA, feeding deep denial on the part of those in the cataloging community that fervently hoped that RDA would not require a move to something other than MARC. This was true even as each RDA revision continued to express more explicitly its underlying FRBR model, a model that is not currently accommodated in the MARC record.”

Read the Technicalities article, it’s good.