Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records
The Library of Congress’s list of subject headings has been available in machine-readable form since 1986 to help organize the latest cataloging form. Problems associated with assigning headings have existed for some time, however. Attempts are always being made to resolve the issues; but, problems sometimes can take years to fix. For example, even though there are multiple access points assigned to catalog records, only one heading gets the designation as being the “main entry,” and the AACR2R maintains this rule today. The Paris Principles, which was based on Seymour Lubetzky’s draft code of 1960, is largely responsible for the AACR2R’s choice to place the author’s name as the primary choice for main entry. And, even though the main entry is based on authorship, a definition for the concept of author has never been well-defined. An author could be the editor of the work or even the collector of the item. Authors of journals, reports, and debates could also be societies, countries, or cities. AA 1908 and ALA Draft 1941 gave similarly ambiguous descriptions of authorship. The ALA 1949 defined authorship to be, in addition to artist and composer, a corporate body, compiler or editor, photographer or cartographer.
Prior to 1967, the ALA maintained the rigid approach outlined by Paul S. Dunkin that the heading was to be the author’s real name regardless of what other names that person went by. Someone searching for Mark Twain, for example, would have to search under Clemens, Samuel Langhorne. With the authority record of authors being limited to just one, searching for a person would have sometimes been difficult in the years prior to 1967.
The evolution of cataloging codes has brought us to the AACR2R, by which conflicts have been resolved and many agreements have been made. Much, however, still needs to be done to make the cataloging rules sufficient for today’s vast collections. The Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) is a bibliographic model that encompasses both traditional items and the growing array of digital objects. Plans for a new edition of the AACR (AACR3) have been underway for years now; and, as a step in that direction, proposals have already been made to revise AACR2 to include the FRBR concepts, terms, and user tasks.
The IFLA released FRBR in 1998 for the restructuring of catalog databases to reflect the conceptual structure of information sources. Its importance was emphasized because of the increasing need to reduce cataloging costs, and because new forms of electronic publishing had to be accommodated. An increase in interoperability worldwide will become more apparent among libraries as FRBR and FRAR (Functional Requirements for Authority Records and References) become more integrated into the cataloging rules. FRBR enhances searching abilities for end-users by collocation of a more precise and encompassing collection of items with the support of Semantic Web, a framework that allows sharing through community boundaries to provide a “one-stop shop” for information retrieval.
New products are also being developed that focus on the needs of students as well as information consumers. RedLightGreen from Research Libraries Group (RLG) is a product in its experimental stage that focuses on the needs of the undergraduate student. It is attempting to be superior to library OPACs by alerting the user to the closest library containing the item searched, and allowing the user to re-use the bibliographic information in a choice of standard citations to use in bibliographies and footnotes. RedLightGreen may also support the offerings of online booksellers like Amazon, Borders, and Barnes & Noble. The FRBR vision for the future still puts the user first, providing collocation and differentiation of entities that are meaningful to users.
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