Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR): Hype or Cure‐All?

Citation

MacLennan, A. (2006), "Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR): Hype or Cure‐All?", Library Review, Vol. 55 No. 8, pp. 536-537. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530610689400

FRBR is an elegant and clearly‐presented expression of IFLA's recommendations for “a clearly‐defined, structured framework” for relating the data in bibliographic records produced by national bibliographic agencies to the needs of the users of those records, and to define “a basic level of functionality” for those records (FRBR Final Report, 1998).

The study is set in context by having the data content (which is embodied in the ISBDs, the Guidelines for Authority Reference Entries and the UNIMARC manual) mapped on to this model. This reassures us that nothing has been lost in the entity‐relationship analysis which precedes the description of content. A re‐reading of the report is recommended before tackling the book in hand, because some of the arguments are rather abstruse, and it definitely helps to have a grasp of IFLA's definitions of work, expression, manifestation and item in advance.

Olivia Madison provides a useful historical overview of the model's development to follow Patrick Le Boeuf's rather dizzying introduction, and we are then taken on a tour through various, and varyingly, specialist areas of application. It appears that the FRBR model is more satisfactory in some areas (academic bibliography, OCLC's WorldCat, RDF and the Semantic Web) than in others (subject access, hand‐press materials), probably reflecting its declared status as “a useful starting point” for “further analysis”. When the articles ascend to the finer points beloved of cataloguers, there are demands for extension and development, but even in dealing with categories to which cataloguing would seem to be of lesser relevance, such as dramatic performance (Miller and Le Boeuf) and oral tradition (Yann), the authors find in the FRBR principles at least the basis for meaningful development.

Dimec, Zumer and Reisthuis show that there may be considerable resource implications in conforming to FRBR, the Slovenian national bibliography being relatively rich in descriptive elements, but less so in notes on bibliographic history. This lack is reflected in a lack of uniform titles, thus creating problems in identifying the work, the entity on which expressions, manifestations and items are dependent. It may reasonably be assumed that Slovenia will not be alone here, but we can also see evidence of some of the potential rewards in moving towards FRBR‐compliance. FRBR is not a cataloguing code (though its relationship to the ISBDs makes the record description reassuringly familiar to users of AACR2): it is more a model on which the logical structure of future catalogues can be based. Kerry Kilner's paper on the AustLit Gateway describes an exciting new resource cataloguing Australian Literature. Though only sample searches are available to non‐subscribers, there is sufficient evidence of functionality to make AustLit a pointer to one way forward –‘one’ way, because although FRBR dates from 1998, exploitation still has a long way to go, and great promise. Hype or cure‐all? Neither, but a developing vision.