Coming Soon to Your Library?

Recent discussions in the library community about the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) data model have gener-ated many questions that do not seem to have easy answers.1 How is the FRBR model likely to affect most libraries... and when? Should cataloging managers be preparing to retrain their departments in something entirely new? Do other library staff members need to be concerned with FRBR, or is it just a cataloging thing? How can a library prepare for something that is not a new standard (and thus has no firm date of implementation) and that will not affect all libraries in the same way? Some librarians are becoming so apprehensive about FRBR that the term “FRBRphobia ” comes to mind. While the FRBR model offers great potential for influencing the way that we think about bibliographic data, we must first understand the components of the model itself well enough to make that possible. Unfortunately, discussions of FRBR sometimes make this difficult by focusing on how the most complicated bibliographic situations fit (or do not seem to fit) into FRBR’s entity/attribute structure. This can give the misleading impression that the model is complex and difficult to learn. The theoretical nature of the FRBR model, which does not relate directly to any familiar data content or tagging standard, may make the possible effects of FRBR on individual libraries or library applications difficult to predict and understand. FRBR can seem very remote from daily library activities, and thus may appear to be of limited value except to catalog-ing theorists. To address these concerns about FRBR, understanding some of the spe-cific processes through which FRBR will begin to affect libraries is important. This paper will address some of these processes by first examining the effect of FRBR on cataloging through efforts to incorporate portions of the FRBR model into the Anglo American Cataloguing Rules (AACR), next by exploring the possible impact of FRBR on the development of online library systems an