National Library of Australia Staff Papers, 2005

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The Australian National Bibliographic Database and the Function Requirements for the Bibliographic Database (FRBR)

Bemal Rajapatirana, Roxanne Missingham

Abstract


Library catalogues and union catalogues have, for many decades, been based upon records stored in MARC and catalogued according to AACR2. While this has given stability and consistency, the emergence of a new concept, the Functional Requirements for the Bibliographic Record (FRBR), has enabled a new light to be shone on management of bibliographic records. The FRBR conceptual model proposes descriptions of library materials with four levels of description:

  • a work (which is realised through)
  • an expression (which is established in)
  • a manifestation (which is exemplified by)
  • an item.

In posing these relationships the model offers the potential to move the intellectual activities undertaken by cataloguers into a new environment where information is not stored in a ‘flat’ record but one where relationships enable searching and display based on a more flexible understanding of resources.

FRBR can enable users to find resources which are related through catalogue entries which, while containing the information traditionally described in bibliographic records, are ‘clustered’ together in a new way. While it is relatively early days for FRBR, the RLG and OCLC have applied these concepts in new services for users – the Red Light Green catalogue aimed at undergraduates and OCLC’s Fiction Finder. Clustered records can include different editions of a work, translations and different formats, for example audio and printed books.


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