FRBR, Before and After: A Look at Our Bibliographic Models

by Karen Coyle

Overview

Coyle's articulate treatment of the issues at hand helps bridge the divide between traditional cataloging practice and the algorithmic metadata approach, making this book an important resource for both LIS students and practitioners.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780838913451
Publisher:	American Library Association
Publication date:	10/14/2015
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Karen Coyle is a librarian with over 30 years’ experience with library technology, who serves as consultant on a variety of issues relating to digital libraries. She has published dozens of articles and reports, many of which are available at kcoyle.net. She has served on several standards committees, including the MARC standards group (MARBI) and the NISO committee AX for the OpenURL standard, and was an ALA representative on the e-book standards development team that contributed to the ePub standard. She writes and speaks on a wide range of policy areas, including intellectual property, privacy, and public access to information. Her January 2010 issue of Library Technology Reports, “Understanding the Semantic Web: Bibliographic Data and Metadata,” was awarded the 2011 ALCTS Outstanding Publication Award.

Editorial Reviews

03/01/2016
In 1998 an International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) study group published a report on the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR), which impacted the cataloging world in subsequent years. Here library consultant Coyle (Understanding the Semantic Web: Bibliographic Data and Metadata) provides a lucid and thorough explanation of what FRBR both is and is not. The first part of the book contains historical and theoretical background on the nature of a work, as well as models and technology. This helps to place FRBR in the larger context of cataloging history. Part 2 examines and critiques the FRBR final report, showing the ways in which the FRBR study group either met or failed to accomplish their stated goals. The book concludes with a discussion of the Semantic Web as a logical progression from FRBR's entity-relation model. VERDICT Coyle deftly explains complex topics in a straightforward way, creating a highly recommended work that will be essential for catalogers and appeal to all librarians. For another useful book on the subject, see Robert Maxwell's FRBR: A Guide for the Perplexed.—Joshua Wallace, Ranger Coll., TX

Library Journal