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Content

"Catalogers, catalog managers, and others in library technical services have become increasingly interested in, worried over, and excited about FRBR (the acronym for Functional Requirements of Bibliographic Records). Staff outside of the management of the library's bibliographic database may wonder what the fuss is about (FERBER? FURBUR?), assuming that FRBR is just another addition to the stable of acronyms that catalogers bandy about, a mate or sibling to MARC and AACR2. FRBR, however, has the potential to inspire dramatic changes in library catalogs, and those changes will greatly impact how reference and resource sharing staff and patrons use this core tool. FRBR is a conceptual model for how bibliographic databases might be structured, considering what functions bibliographic records should fulfill in an era when card catalogs are databases with unique possibilities. In some ways FRBR clarifies certain cataloging practices that librarians have been using for over 160 years, since Sir Anthony Panizzi, Keeper of the Printed Books at the British Museum, introduced a set of 91 rules to catalog the print collections of the museum. Sir Anthony believed that patrons should be able to find a particular work by looking in the catalog, that all of an author's works should be retrievable, and that all editions of a work should be assembled together. In other ways, FRBR extends upon past practice to take advantage fully of the capabilities of digital technology to associate bibliographic records in ways a card catalog cannot. FRBR was prepared by a study group assembled by IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) that included staff of the Library of Congress (LC). The final report of the group, "Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records," is available online. The group began by asking how an online library catalog might better meet users' needs to find, identify, select, and obtain the resources they want.
What are these two Beowulf translations "expressions" of? I used the term work above, an even more abstract concept in the FRBR model. In this case, the "work" is Beowulf , that ancient intellectual creation or effort that over time has been expressed in multiple ways, each manifested in several different ways itself, with one or more items in each manifestation. This is a pretty gross oversimplification of FRBR, which also details other relationships: among these entities; between these entities and various persons (such as creators, publishers, and owners); and between these entities and their subjects. It also specifies characteristics, or "attributes," of the different types of entities (such as title, physical media, date, availability, and more.). But it should be enough to grasp the possibilities. Now apply it Imagine that you have a patron who needs a copy of Heaney's translation of Beowulf . She doesn't care who published it or when, only that it's Heaney's translation. What if you (or your patron) could place an interlibrary loan call on that expression, instead of looking through multiple bibliographic records (as of March, OCLC's WorldCat had nine regular print editions) for multiple manifestations and then judging which record is the best bet on which to place a request? Combine that with functionality that lets you specify "not Braille, not large print," and it could save you time. Now imagine a patron in want of a copy, any copy, in English, of Romeo and Juliet. Saving staff time means saving money. Whether or not this actually happens depends upon what the library community decides to do with FRBR. It is not a set of cataloging rules or a system design, but it can influence both. Several library system vendors are working with FRBR ideas; VTLS's current integrated library system product Virtua incorporates FRBR concepts in its design. More vendors may follow. How the Joint Steering Committee for Revision of Anglo-American Cataloging Rules develops the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules (AACR) to incorporate FRBR will necessarily be a strong determinant of how records work in a "FRBR-ized" bibliographic database.