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Denton, William. "FRBR and the History of Cataloging."
Chapter 4 in Understanding FRBR: What It Is and How It Will Affect Our Retrieval, edited by Taylor, Arlene G.
An explanation of where FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) comes from, given by a look at the work of librarians such as Panizzi, Cutter, Ranganathan, and Lubzetsky, and an examination of four themes in the history of library cataloging: the use of axioms to explain the purpose of catalogs, the importance of user needs, the idea of the "work," and standardization and internationalization.
"The full text of the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) incorporating the amended definition of the expression entity as well as the errata identified to date has been made available on IFLANET in both PDF and HTML formats.
For the first time, the HTML versions of both the current text and the original 1998 text include the tables, rather than just references to the PDF version."
The International Standard Text Work Code (ISTC) is a numbering system developed to enable the unique identification of textual works.
Why does the ISTC matter?
As the text supply chain becomes increasingly digital, there is a growing need to uniquely identify the text of a work before it becomes a manifestation, regardless of the editions or formats which it might ultimately take. This way the creators of text works, and their authorized representatives, can more effectively manage information about the work throughout the supply chain and across industry databases and in business transactions.
As a unique identifier, the ISTC is useful in a wide range of computerized applications; some of its possible uses include tracking usage of textual works; verification of title registrations for anti-piracy purposes; management of rights information."
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ISTC will link various versions of texts (print, digital, large print), but it will not link all related items (so it does not solve the FRBR linking problem completely). At the DLF session "New Developments in Bibliographic Services: A Report from Bowker" Angela D'Agastino noted that it would not link translations or audio books. It is unclear whether it would link editions.
As the project team investigates long-term sustainability issues for the Variations3 software, we have begun thinking about what a truly FRBR-ized version of the metadata model would look like, and if changing to this type of model would make our system more sustainable and interoperable. As a first step towards answering these questions, members of the Variations3 project team have released a report outlining the potential application of FRBR to a system designed to deliver musical content in a library environment."
The award panel state, "This captivatingly crafted article brings a panoply of historiography and knowledge organization to bear on the problem of how to define and describe the records of evanescence: that is, performances. The dream metaphor, which is all mixed up with the show-biz metaphor, which reaches back to Shakespeare's Tempest is all too apt for the nature of performances, and especially for their treatment with FRBR. The paper is timely, original, innovative, extremely well-documented, and of enduring
value. It has appeared at a critical juncture for the application of the FRBR model in the bibliographic control of performances. We applaud the authors. Bravo!"
The IFLA Working Group on Functional Requirements and Numbering of Authority Records is pleased to announce that a 2nd draft of "Functional Requirements for Authority Data" (previously titled "Functional Requirements for Authority Records") is now available for worldwide review. This draft, updated in response to comments received during the previous review, is on the IFLA web site at http://www.ifla.org/VII/d4/wg-franar.htm .
Comments should be sent by July 15, 2007 to:
Glenn Patton
Email: pattong@oclc.org