1.
FRBR, RDA, and the
future of cataloging
LIS 551
Dorothea Salo

2.
Agenda
•Quiz recap
•A little review
•And the same-or-different game!
•FRBR
•The model
•Group 1 entities
•Groups 2 and 3 entities
•RDA
•Context and history
•Notable changes from AACR2

3.
Review
•What is MARC? What was it designed to do?
•What is AACR2? What does it govern?
•What is ISBD(G)? What does it govern? How
does it fit with MARC?
•What are we doing with MARC records today
that we weren’t doing with catalog cards in
the 1960s?

4.
From what you read...
•What difficulties is the library community
finding in the MARC/AACR2/ISBD(G)
way of doing things?
•What solutions are they recommending?

5.
Problems
•Print-book-centricity
•It isn’t just “the digital” that MARC/AACR2/ISBD(G) has problems with. Music has
been a thorn in the side for ages.
•General confusion of content vs. carrier.
•Should we really try to create the One Standard (set) That Rules Them All to begin
with? That’s not where the rest of the world is going.
•Patron perception of OPACs
•especially conditioned by Google!
•Internationalization of cataloging
•Latin abbreviations? English free text? Really?
•What’s preventing us from having records that are useful cross-linguistically?
•Too much praxis, not enough theory.
•Edge-case-based cataloging-code development led to myriad “special rules.”

6.
Given that...
•... what do YOU think the future has in
store for MARC/AACR2/ISBD(G)?
•What does this mean for the existing
recordbase?
•What does this mean for catalogers?
Other librarians? Librarianship generally?

7.
I don’t know the answers.
These are the same questions
librarianship is currently
asking itself.

8.
I expect you to understand:
•AACR2:RDA::MARC:BIBFRAME
•(older standard and redesign effort)
•We’re not redesigning ISBD(G). Why
not, do you think?

9.
FRBR
•Functional Requirements for Bibliographic
Records
•“Requirements” is a term of art in software development, meaning “a
detailed, actionable specification of what a piece of software needs to do.”
•So FRBR developers were really asking themselves, “what do bib records
need to accomplish?” Just like Panizzi, Cutter, and Lubetsky!
•Unlike Panizzi et al, FRBR developers started with actual user research, not
just their assumptions about what users did. Also, an awareness of the
competition (Google!).

10.
Review: bibliographic
objectives, per Cutter
•Find a book if you know its author/title/subject.
•“Known item” search. (Svenonius: “finding objective”)
•Access point: Hook chosen for indexing records, permitting searches.
•Find every book the library has with a given
author/title/subject.
•Svenonius: “collocation objective”
•COLLOCATION: Put like things together, along a given axis of “likeness.” (Fiction vs.
non-fiction?)
•THIS is the organizing principle aimed at browsers.
•Be sure you have the book you were looking for.

11.
FRBR user tasks
•FIND: an information package meeting a
user’s criteria
•... whether by searching or browsing
•so this includes the collocation principle
•IDENTIFY: that an information package
in hand is the exact one sought
•SELECT: an information package based
on content/carrier needs
•so, a video or a journal article or an online map... whatever
•OBTAIN: the package through the most
expedient means

12.
Same or different?
(If in doubt, ask yourself: do I want to see these
as separate search results? should they have
separate records in the catalog?)

13.
So, what does a catalog
record actually represent?
What SHOULD it represent?

14.
matter as long as it’s in good condition
of and not missing pages. FRBR calls this
n. FRBR Group 1 entities:
a “manifestation.”
solving the “same or different” problem
œuf,
Web
des

15.
matter as long as it’s in good condition
First, a word about the model
A continues to monitor the application of and not missing pages. FRBR calls this
BR and promotes its use and evolution. a “manifestation.”
IFLA Cataloguing Section’s Working
up on FRBR, chaired by Patrick LeBœuf,
an active online discussion list and a Web
at http://www.ifla.org/VII/s13/
rbr/wgfrbr.htm. The Web site includes
sentations, training tools, a hotlinked
iography, and much more.
•“Entity-relationship diagram”
2
ure is available in PDF format on the Web at: http://www.loc.gov/cds/FRBR.html (Revised February 2004)
•How relational database design is represented
•So already we have a more current record format than MARC!
•We will use FRBR Group 1 as our example for
database day. Learn this diagram!

16.
Item
•Perhaps the easiest to understand: the
individual thing you’re holding in your hand.
•so “copy 1” and “copy 2” of the same book are two different items.
•What do bookstores think of this level? Do they use it?
•Why might it be especially important for special collections?
•Even this gets weird, though.
•Is the web page you’re looking at the same item as the web page sitting on its
owner’s web server? I THINK FRBR treats these as the same item... even though
with ads, feeds, and on-the-fly includes, “same” is a weird idea here.

17.
Manifestation
•An individual publication run. Which may
include many copies (items), of course.
•Close to the idea of an “edition.”
•Again... when does a website become a
new manifestation of itself?
•How does the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine handle this?

18.
Work
•The intellectual output. (Yes, it’s an
abstraction; intentionally so.)
•Often what patrons mean when they say
“I need/want to read...”
•Though the next part of the conversation is often about expressions or
manifestations based on carrier! E.g. ebook vs. audiobook vs. print book,
score vs. recording, etc.

19.
Expression
•Last because fuzziest!
•The various “realizations” of a Work.
•Translations
•Adaptations (e.g. book to movie, movie to book, play to opera)
•Arrangements (of a musical piece)
•Abridgements, bowdlerizations, revisions...
•Lots of outstanding questions about when
something is an Expression.

20.
Pesky problem: aggregate works
•How do you express a book of essays in FRBR?
•Each essay is a Work, but...
•... the edited collection is a Manifestation? Kind of? But may have Expression variants
(e.g. translations)?
•FRBR doesn’t let Manifestations contain Works!
•Aggregate works come up... a lot.
•Aggregate work: an information package containing more than one bibliographically-
unrelated work.
•Serials!
•Music scores!
•Websites, for pity’s sake!
•Express as relationships? How?

21.
Relationships
•FRBR is more than the WEMI hierarchy!
•A lot of pixels spilled on how works and
expressions relate to each other, and
how to represent that to users.
•Expansion on MARC idea of “relator
codes,” which fell into disrepute because
it’s time-consuming to capture.
•So, a real question: will we capture these relationships now? Really? Has
it suddenly become more cost-effective? What will catalogers stop doing
in order to do this?

22.
Group 2 and 3 entities
•Group 2: humans
•Individual humans
•Collectives of humans
•Relationships between Group 1 and Group 2 entities: what you’d expect!
Authorship, publishing, translating, illustrating, etc. etc.
•Group 3: (other kinds of) subjects
•Concepts, objects, events, places
•Also includes Group 1 and Group 2 entities! (So it’s fine to have a Work
about a Person, or a Work about another Work.)

23.
Which WEMI level?
•Relate the following Group 2 entities to
ONE level of WEMI:
•Author
•Publisher
•Translator
•Editor
•Author of a foreword
•Abridger

24.
Try it out!
•Look at the MARC fields and subfields you
understand in the records below.
•(For each one, click the “LC Online Catalog” link and then the “MARC tags” tab.)
•Establish whether each field/subfield pertains to a Work, Expression,
Manifestation, or Item. Or a Group 2 or 3 entity.
•Is this an aggregate work? What Works or Expressions does it contain (or relate
to), and which fields/subfields pertain to which?
•What other Works or Expressions might you want to relate this one to?
•http://lccn.loc.gov/78763521
•http://lccn.loc.gov/2007028391
•http://lccn.loc.gov/96525880

25.
So what will “a FRBRized
record” look like?
•Will it really be the relational model inherent in
FRBR?
•So a Work will have a separate record from its Expressions, and so on down the line...
•Or do we need “records” at all?
•If we have entities, and we slap identifiers on them, we can make a series of
statements about them without confining them to a specific “record” or record format.
•This is how Resource Description Framework (RDF), the basis for Linked Data, works;
we’ll look at it later in the semester.
•Suffice to say, catalogers have not warmed to this idea; it turns their world completely
inside-out. They want to see RECORDS.

26.
Resource Description
and Access
•“AACR3” briefly bruited, widely panned
•RDA: purported successor to AACR2
•Supposed to free cataloging rules from current inextricable ties to MARC and
ISBD(G); rules useful in many metadata contexts, not just cataloging
•Supposed to SIMPLIFY a lot of current pilpul
•Supposed to allow description of many more kinds of materials
•Supposed to help catalog data play more nicely with the larger information world
•Controlled by “Joint Steering Committee”
•http://www.rda-jsc.org/index.html
•ALA, Aussies, Brits, Canadians, LoC (internationalization? really?)

27.
Political context
•Programmers driven around the bend by MARC
•and being expected to make unprepossessing MARC data work harder and harder
•Catalogers feeling beleaguered and insulted
•Backdrop: lots of libraries deciding they can’t afford catalogers
•Widespread conflation of MARC/AACR2/ISBD(G) with bibliographic description
generally (“will we even be cataloging [books, understood] any more?”)
•Heated rhetoric about “MARC is the core of the library profession!” (see Michael
Gorman, Martha Yee)
•Lots of arguments about metadata vs. cataloging
•Lots of catalogers who can’t or won’t retrain/reskill
•With all of this, who actually did the RDA
design work? CATALOGERS.

28.
The bomb drops
•RDA work began in 2004.
•Very much informed by work on FRBR.
•Coyle and Hillmann drop a bomb in 2007
•http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january07/coyle/01coyle.html
•Criticisms: RDA too wedded to the past, too conservative, not enough input and support
from other metadata initiatives... rearranging deck chairs.
•RDA development came to a screeching halt.
•Eventually, it started up again, and the first
version was published in 2010.
•I can’t show it to you. You have to pay for it. This makes sense how?
•(This is a fight between “funding RDA development” and “achieving RDA adoption.” I think
it’s a stupid fight, but I also don’t have to figure out how to fund RDA development.)

29.
Some notable changes
in RDA

30.
Buh-bye, Rule of Three
•Transcribe ENTIRE statement of
responsibility
•Added entry for all contributors
•Yay! Now we can REALLY find all the works by a given author!
•Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas
making catalog cards any more!
•Getting rid of the Rule of Three is an acknowledgment that we no longer
have the space constraints imposed by catalog cards.

31.
Transcribe it!
•Statements of responsibility, as discussed
•Edition statements

32.
Stop abbreviating it!
•Common (and often unstandardized)
English abbreviations, e.g. “ill.”/”illus.”
•Common-for-catalogers Latin abbreviations,
e.g. “s.l.”
•Latin “sine loco” = “without place”
•Replace with: “[place of publication not identified]”
•Ow. Invitation to repetitive-stress disorders?
•Most cataloging environments have macro capability, at least.
•Unsolved problem: internationalization
•Not theoretical! Ask someone from Quebec.
•Recording stuff as (language-bound) strings creates problems.

33.
Kiss $245h goodbye!
•What is $245h (“general material
designation”) really? Dumping ground for
“this is not a print book.”
•MAJOR, hideous content-carrier confusion!
•“cartographic materials” “graphic materials” alongside “motion picture”
“computer file”
•A CD is a [sound recording], yes, but so is a cassette or an online oral history!
•[electronic resource] = ebooks, Playaways, websites, digital-library resources,
digital music, e-journals... THIS IS BIZARRE. Patrons don’t think like this! And
it confuses computers no end!
•Practical upshot: difficult or impossible to do useful things like “show me all
the DVDs” in MARC/AACR2 catalogs. BIZARRE.

34.
Content, media, carrier
•Splitting GMD into three separate fields
•RDA-in-MARC: 336 (content type), 337
(media type), 338 (carrier type)
•Content type: What is this, fundamentally?
•Media type: What am I likely to need to mediate my access to this?
What’s between me and this information?
•Carrier type: What’s this thing living on, physically?
•All three fields connected with controlled
vocabularies.
•We’ll look at them one at a time.

35.
Alison Hitchens, “Resource Description and Access (RDA) for Systems
Staff” Code4lib North, May 2012

36.
Where we stand now
•Experiments
•OCLC is leading FRBRization experiments. They discovered that 4/5 of
their records didn’t need FRBRization: only one Manifestation per Work.
•LoC is leading experimentation with RDA-based cataloging.
•Coyle and Hillmann trying to solidify
RDA data models, harmonize with
models outside librarianship.
•“RDA Vocabularies, Process, Outcome, Use” http://www.dlib.org/dlib/
january10/hillmann/01hillmann.html
•ILS vendors and catalogers, to each
other: “YOU FIRST.”
•Catalogers: “Do we have to do this? Whyyyyyyyyyyyyy?”

37.
Something to notice
•RDA is (at least in theory) being developed
for use outside (as well as inside) a strictly-
cataloging context.
•So where are archivists in this discussion?
Metadata librarians (pace Hillmann and
Coyle)? Metadata standards designers?
•Why might that be? Is it a problem? Why?
•We’ll return to this question when we discuss BIBFRAME.

38.
Thought librarianship
was static? Nope.