Tag Archives: FRBR

Transforming our Bibliographic Framework: A Statement from the Library of Congress (May 13, 2011). The Library of Congress will address these issues:

• Determine which aspects of current metadata encoding standards should be retained and evolved into a format for the future. We will consider MARC 21, in which billions of records are presently encoded, as well as other initiatives.
• Experiment with Semantic Web and linked data technologies to see what benefits to the bibliographic framework they offer our community and how our current models need to be adjusted to take fuller advantage of these benefits.
• Foster maximum re-use of library metadata in the broader Web search environment, so that end users may be exposed to more quality metadata and/or use it in innovative ways.
• Enable users to navigate relationships among entities--such as persons, places, organizations, and concepts--to search more precisely in library catalogs and in the broader Internet. We will explore the use of promising data models such as Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) in navigating relationships, whether those are actively encoded by librarians or made discernible by the Semantic Web.
• Explore approaches to displaying metadata beyond current MARC-based systems.
• Identify the risks of action and inaction, including an assessment of the pace of change acceptable to the broader community: will we take incremental steps or take bolder, faster action?
• Plan for bringing existing metadata into new bibliographic systems within the broader Library of Congress technical infrastructure--a critical consideration given the size and value of our legacy databases.

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