n. (abbr. FRBR)a conceptual entity–relationship model for bibliographic metadata based on user retrieval and access tasksDanskin and Chapman 2003, 42The “Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records” is a data model commissioned by IFLA, “to define the functional requirements of bibliographic records in relation to the variety of user needs and the variety of media.” FRBR is a recognition that OPACs and WebPACs are not the whole solution.Tillett 2005, 28Today FRBR provides an opportunity to re-examine our cataloguing rules and principles. The Joint Steering Committee for Revision of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (JSC) is using FRBR not only to update terminology, but also to re-examine and hopefully improve the traditional linking devices of uniform titles in light of FRBR.Carlyle 2006, 272The Joint Steering Committee for the Revision of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules has stated that the next revision of the rules, to be called Rules for Description and Access (RDA), will incorporate aspects of the FRBR model. This new set of rules, incorporating FRBR entities, should make the process of identifying the particular entities that comprise a document much clearer for catalogers than it is now.Yeo 2012, 71What appears to be needed is a richer framework that does not require us to impose a single set of boundaries, allows us to represent collections as well as fonds, acknowledges that fonds may overlap and may not correspond precisely to any existing collection, and recognizes that items or sets of items may move from one collection to another as collections are formed and re-formed over time. At present, the most promising approaches to developing such a framework are to be found in the world of relational and object-oriented modelling, which in recent years has formed the basis of the CIDOC reference model for museums, the FRBR model in librarianship, and a handful of initiatives in the archives and records domain, of which the best known is the Australian SPIRT model.Dancy 2012, 22FRBR’s “product” entities (Group 1: work, expression, manifestation, item) all essentially operate at what for archives is the item level of description.Gilliland 2014a, 115FRBR is based on entity-relationship models that delineate a hierarchy of relationships between information resources, which can be classified as Works, Expressions, Manifestations and Items; and user tasks, categorized as Find, Identify, Select, Obtain, and Navigate.Gracy and Lambert 2014, 113Resource Description and Access (RDA), the practical realization of FRBR, was published in 2012. RDA has become the “new” primary standard for bibliographic description in LIS, replacing the second edition of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR2). While RDA might easily be critiqued as a poor choice for archival description, the FRBR framework upon which it is based includes archival collections as a type of aggregate work.Howarth 2018, 216OCLC is currently engaged in a project, WorldCat Works, which builds on the FRBR model of Works to provide interconnected linked data views of those entities.Nelson 2019, 2To frame this exploration, it makes good sense to adopt as a heuristic starting point the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR), a popular high-level set of recommendations that is very popular in information science circles in theory if not yet in practice. FRBR is nonetheless a helpful tool for thinking about how to structure bibliographic resources, but as we will see, there are some complications in our example that are not easily resolved within a FRBR framework. The FRBR model for describing bibliographic resources posits four types of entities for identifying ‘products of intellectual or artistic endeavor (e.g. publications)’: ‘work,’ ‘expression,’ ‘manifestation,’ and ‘item.’
Notes
The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) Study Group on Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) developed FRBR and first published the model in 1998. The FRBR model includes four levels of bibliographic representation: work, expression, manifestation, and item. It is based on four user tasks in bibliographic searching: find, identify, select, and explore.
