FRBR and RDA -- What they are How we got to where we are now How they may affect our future

A presentation for the MOBIUS ConferenceJune 6, 2012, Columbia, MissouriCharles Croissant, Senior Catalog LibrarianPius XII Memorial Library, Saint Louis Universitycroisscr@slu.edu

Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR)

an overview

• An attempt to develop an conceptual model that could express a shared (international) understanding of what bibliographic records should be and what they should be expected to accomplish.

• Impetus: recognition of the need to make optimal use of all the opportunities for shared cataloging in the new online environment, plus a need to have a rational response to all the economic pressures libraries were facing to reduce the cost of cataloging – In its beginning, an attempt to form consensus at the

international level on just how minimal a record could be and still perform its necessary functions.

– Now seen as a theory of cataloging.

An initiative of IFLA, the International Federation of Library Associations

Began life at the 1990 Stockholm Seminar on Bibliographic Records

Years of research by a task force of IFLA’s Section on Cataloguing.Some “big names” on the Task Force: John Byrum (Library of Congress),

Dorothy McGarry (UCLA), Tom Delsey (National Library of Canada), Elaine Svenonius (UCLA), Barbara Tillett (Library of Congress)

Presented to IFLA and approved in 1997.

Has become our new theoretical model for cataloging, and the basis for the forthcoming cataloging code, Resource Description and Access (RDA)

Starting point: The user tasksFind (a resource that meets certain criteria)

Identify (make sure the resource is the one you want and not some other, similar resource)

Select (from a number of possible resources, select the one that is most useful to you in your particular situation)

Obtain (get it from its current location to a place where you can use it – gaining access to the resource)

(navigate) (being able to make your way through a catalog, a search engine, a Web site to find what you want)

FRBR poses the question:

What data and what kinds of data structures are required so that a user can successfully perform the user tasks?

The FRBR Model

• Is an “entity-relationship” model

– STEP 1: identify all the possible entities in the process you are analyzing.

– STEP 2: Identify all the attributes your entities can possess.– STEP 3: Identify all the possible relationships that can exist

between any two of your entities.

• The groups of entities:

• Group 1: The “bibliographic” entities – Work, expression, manifestation, item.

• Group 2: The “agent” entities – individual persons, corporate bodies.

• Group 3: The “subject” entities – concepts, events, places, etc., plus any of the Group 1 and Group 2 entities.

WEMI (“work, expression, manifestation, item”)

The official definitions of the Group 1 bibliographic entities (quoting from the IFLA document):

Work = “a distinct intellectual or artistic creation.”

Expression = “the intellectual or artistic realization of a work in the form of alpha-numeric, musical, or choreographic notation, sound, image, object, movement, etc., or any combination of such forms.”

Manifestation = “the physical embodiment of an expression of a work.”

Item = “a single exemplar of a manifestation ... a single physical object.”

See examples in the FRBR text:FRBR, Section 3.2

The Group 1 entities exist between two poles:

Entirely abstract: the Work (think “Platonic ideal”)

“A work is an abstract entity; there is no single material object one can point to as the work”—IFLA’s FRBR document, section 3.2.1.

Entirely concrete: the Item

Group 1 entities and the Primary Relationships

Work is realized through Expression

is embodied in Manifestation

is exemplified by• Item

The “responsibility” relationships

These are the relationships that link:

an entity from Group 2 (person or corporate body)

toan entity from Group 1 (work, expression,

manifestation, item)

The responsibility relationships include:

Created by (authorship)Relationship between a person and a work

Realized by Relationship between a person and an expression:

stage designer, translator, performer of a musical work

Produced by –Relationship between a person or corporate body

and a manifestation:publishing house, sound recording label

Owned by –Relationship between a person or corporate body

and an item:library and a copy of a book; person and a book they own

AttributesEach of the entities in the FRBR model is defined by the

attributes it possesses.

A work has some or all of these attributes (among others):

Title of the workForm of work (i.e. genre; the class to which the work

belongs: novel, play, poem, concerto, map, etc.)Date of the work (date of its creation)Intended termination (finite? Or continuing on?)Intended audienceMedium of performance (i.e. for a musical work)

Attributes, con’t.

An expression has some or all of these attributes (among others):

Title of the expression (may differ from the title of the work, e.g. in the case of translation into a new language)

Form of the expression (e.g. alpha-numeric, musical notation, musical sound, photographic image, dance)

Date of the expressionLanguage of the expression

Attributes, con’t.Attributes of a manifestation:A manifestation is a physical object, so its attributes correspond to the elements of a bibliographic description:

•Title of the manifestation, statement of responsibility.•Edition statement.•Place of publication, publisher, date of publication.•Form of carrier (book, CD, DVD, microfilm)•Extent of carrier (e.g. for a book, number of pages, height of book)•Mode of capture (e.g. for a sound recording, analog or digital)

Attributes, con’t.Attributes of an item:The item is a specific copy of a manifestation. Its attributes can include:

•Item identifier (a number or code uniquely associated with the item, like a call number or bar code)•Provenance (who are the current and previous owners of the item?)•Physical condition of the item (undamaged? damaged in some specific way? brittle paper?)•Restrictions on access (may it only be used by particular persons, or in a particular location?)

Leo Tolstoy’s novel War and Peacein the FRBR modelA Group 2 entity, a person:

The person Leo TolstoyHas a relationship as creator to

A Group 1 entity, a work (w¹ ): his novel War and Peace, in its abstract form as Tolstoy’s own distinct intellectual creation

Expressions:e¹ = Tolstoy’s own manuscript of the novele² = The Russian text prepared for the publication of the first

editione³ = The English translation made by Constance Garnett

A Group 1 entity, the person Constance GarnettHas a relationship as translator to

e³

Manifestations:m¹ = the first Russian publication of the complete novel, in

Moscow in 1869 under the title Война и мир (Voyna i mir).m² = Constance Garnett’s English translation, as published by W.

Heinemann in London in 1904.

Items:i¹ = a copy of m¹ held by the Harvard University Library.i² = a copy of m² held by the British Library.

Compare and contrast –FRBR vs. our current data model

Current data model is based on a “flat” data structureAll the information that applies to a particular manifestation is

contained in a single record – information that pertains to a whole set of records is essentially re-keyed every time it is needed.

FRBR points us toward a “decentralized” data structure based on entities and relationshipsData is distributed among a number of records that are then

linked together as required to describe a particular manifestation.

Author Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828-1910. Uniform Title Voĭna i mir. English Title War and peace / Leo Tolstoy ; translated from the

Russian by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.

Edition 1st ed. Published New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2007. Description xviii, 1273 p. ; 25 cm.Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (p. [1223]-1247)

and index. Subjects Russia -- History -- Alexander I, 1801-1825 -- Fiction.

Napoleonic Wars, 1800-1815 -- Campaigns -- Russia -- Fiction.

Related Author Pevear, Richard, 1943- Volokhonsky, Larissa.

ISBN 9780307266934

The “exploded record” concept

“Disassembling” or “deconstructing” a bibliographic record into a set of separate data elements

Data elements that represent a particular entity are each recorded in separate records; the possible relationships between entities are also treated as data elements

To create a bibliographic record, the cataloger (or some other intelligent system) chooses a set of entity records and defines the relationships between these entities, such that a computer system can assemble all the various data elements into a record that a user can read and interpret.

Each record for a data element has a one-to-one relationship to the entity or the relationship it represents: information about the entity or relationship can be added or

revised, but the one-to-one correspondence between record and entity/relationship remains stable.

Each data element record can be linked with others in a multitude of ways so that each item in the bibliographic universe can be described by a unique combination of data elements.

“War and Peace” in the “exploded record” model (cascading records)

A person record for Tolstoy links to a record for his work, War and peace, with a link that expresses “Creator”

The work record links to an expression record for Constance Garnett’s English translation (which includes a link to a person record for Constance Garnett, where the link defines Garnett as “Translator”)

The expression record links to a manifestation record for the book published by W. Heinemann in London in 1904

The manifestation record links to an item record for the copy in Harvard’s library

PERSONTolstoy, Leo1828-1910Russian novelist

WORKAnna KareninaNovel

WORKVoina i mir Novel

Created/Created By

EXPRESSIONWar and peace(English translation)

Created/Created by

Is realized through

PERSONConstance Garnett1861-1946Role: literary translator

Translated

MANIFESTATION1904 English edition of War and peace

Is embodied in

CORPORATE BODYWilliam Heinemann Ltd.English publishing house

Publishes ITEMCopy of Heinemann’s 1904 editionheld by Harvard Library

Is exemplified by

FRBR has the potential to move our library data out to where it can be accessed in the Semantic Web – right now so much of our library data is difficult to access because of the data formats we use (and no one else uses)

Once our bibliographic data is recorded as data elements linked by defined relationships, it is much easier for a computer to interpret.

Example of machine interpretation:

a “related work” situation:

• work1 -- Jane Austen’s novel, Pride and prejudice

• work2 -- The BBC video with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle, released in 1995

Our bibliographic record for the BBC video contains the note:

Based on the novel by Jane Austen.Meaningful to a human, meaningless to a machine.

BUT:In FRBR environment:

Work record 1 for Jane Austen’s novel

Work record 2 for the BBC video

the 2 records are connected by a link with a defined value:HasAdaptation/IsAdaptationOf

This can be understood and used by a computer.Eventually this model could allow patrons to pose questions

to our catalogs in natural language.

Why adopt the FRBR model?

• It should better serve the user tasks• Especially helping the user to better find and identify:

works of prolific authors, and all their expressionsworks that exist in many versions (expressions or related

works)

• Increased efficiency – move beyond the re-keying of data

Why adopt FRBR, continued

• Increased potential for international sharing of data• Language neutrality – entities and relationships would

have stable ID numbers; each entity and relationship can be assigned any number of language forms that can be switched in and out depending on the language environment of the user.

• Increased potential for machine interpretation and manipulation of data – more in tune with formats used by other metadata communities – more in tune with the Web environment and the coming Semantic Web.

FRBR and the Semantic Web

RDF = Resource Description FrameworkThe foundation document for the Semantic Web.Like FRBR, it is an entity-relationship model.

A basic piece of RDF: the triple

subject – predicate – objectNatural language: “The sky is blue.”Triple statement:

subject: resource (entity) = “sky” + predicate: has color+ object: value = blue

Each element of the triple is identified by a URI (Uniform Resource Identifier)

RDF: subject – predicate – object

FRBR:Subject: Entity 1 (person) = Leo Tolstoy

+Predicate: is creator of

+Object: Entity 2 (work) = War and peace

(each element of this triple would be identified by a URI)

RDA (Resource Description and Access)

an attempt to build a cataloging code on the FRBR model

departs completely from the model used in AACR2, which was based on the International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD)Areas of the Description, Material Types, Access Points

RDA follows FRBR:

1.Identifies all the entities concerned.2.Decides which attributes of those entities should be

recorded.3.Instructs the cataloger how to record each of the

chosen attributes.4.Defines the possible relationships between its entities.5.Instructs the cataloger how to record the chosen

relationships.

Sections 1 through 4 for recording Attributes of:1. Manifestation and item2. Work and expression3. Person, family, and corporate body4. Concept, object, event & place (N.B. Section 4 – dealing

with the Group 3 Subject entities – hasn’t been written yet)

Section 5 for recording Primary Relationships between work, expression, manifestation and item.

Section 6 for recording Relationships to persons, families and corporate bodies.

Section 7 for recording Relationships to concepts, objects, events, and places (this covers the area of subject access -- like Section 4, this section has yet to be written)

Section 8 for recording between works, expressions, manifestions, and items (i.e. relationships beyond the primary ones recorded in Section 5 – these are “related work” situations, etc.)

Section 9 for recording Relationships between persons, families, and corporate bodies.

Section 10 for recording Relationships between concepts, objects, events, and places (like Sections 4 and 7, this section has yet to be written)

Controversies:

• The testing and adoption process: Timeline and decision-making process, the national test

• Cost – online publishing model – technological haves and have-nots

• Retraining• Who’s going to develop software that would allow the

linking of data elements that RDA expects?

The “Three scenarios” for adopting RDAScenario 1: The “catalog of the future”:

fully FRBR-ized; fully realized linking of records for all data elements; utilizes object-oriented database structures.

Scenario 2: A “middle way”: utilizes linking between authority records and bibliographic records, but doesn’t extend as far as the “full FRBR-ization” of Scenario 1 (this scenario is already available in some ILS vendors’ products; is also present in European systems)

Scenario 3: The U.S. status quo: using RDA, but continuing to catalog in the flat record structure of our existing MARC format. Headings in bibliographic records are backed up by authority records, but there are no links between them.

Current timeline: Library of Congress announced in March, 2012, that its target day for implementation of RDA is March 31, 2013. Most US libraries will adopt this target day as well.

Library of Congress has a task force charged with making plans for a new data format to replace MARC – stay tuned for further developments.

In the meantime, we’ll still be using MARC as our data format for years to come.

Initial differences between AACR2 and RDA are minor and cosmetic:

No more abbreviatingNo more [S.l.] – instead:

[Place of publication not identified]No more p. or ill. – instead:

324 pages : illustrationsNo more use of [sic] – record what you see, make a note as

needed.

RDA drops the use of the General Material Designation (GMD), that is, subfield h in the 245.

Instead, there are 3 attributes that should be recorded in RDA records. New MARC fields (336, 337, 338) have been created for these data elements:

336 = Content type – text, performed music, two-dimensional moving image, etc.

337 = Media type – indicates the type of equipment needed to access the resource, for example: audio, video, unmediated (i.e. a book – no equipment required)

338 = Carrier type – volume, audio disc, audio cassette, video disc, microfilm, etc.

Why drop the GMD?In the FRBR context, the conventional terms we have used as our designators are ambiguous and can’t be consistently mapped to a single level of the bibliographic hierarchy.

Content type is an attribute of the expression.Media type and Carrier type are attributes of the

manifestation.

However, a GMD like [Sound recording] can be understood to refer to content type, but it could equally be meant to refer to media type or carrier type.

Log in to RDA Toolkit

http://access.rdatoolkit.org/

RDA record in SLU’s catalog: OCLC 689548773

Questions and DiscussionContact: croisscr@slu.edu