A Study of Implementation of FRBR- based OPAC

[[abstract]]International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) published the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) in 1998. According to IFLA, bibliographic records, which should perform four user tasks, help users to find, to identify, to select, and to obtain bibliographic data. FRBR analyzes bibliographic records from the work-family angle. FRBR defines the relations of entities that can fulfill the user’s needs. Moreover, FRBR allows the collection held in libraries to be presented and displayed by levels. Online public access catalog (OPAC) presents bibliographic records and collections held in libraries. Whether or not bibliographic records perform the four user tasks described above can be assessed from OPAC. Only few digital library projects have adopted FRBR model to define their metadata formats after FRBR has been launched. Additionally, some libraries and data centers have transformed their traditional bibliographic data into FRBR-based catalogs. However, the application of FRBR to Chinese OPAC systems have not been seriously studied. Therefore, this study tries to explore the possibility of applying FRBR to Chinese OPAC systems. The research questions this study raised include: 1. What is the current state of FRBR application in the library communities? This study will discuss this question based on three aspects, including traditional libraries, digital libraries, and the functions of the interface. 2. What are the results of fields mapping and potential problems that may be emerged when bibliographic records in CMARC format transform into FRBR-based entity model? 3. How to design FRBR-based user interface of Chinese OPAC systems to present the FRBR functions? Research methods of this study are content analysis and Research & Development (R&D). This study analyzes the current state of FRBR application in the library communities based on literature review. It also explores the mapping of CMARC fields and FRBR model by content analysis. Furthermore, this study interviews both five general users and three experts to investigate their needs of OPAC and the functions of FRBR-based interface. Finally, this study provides suggestions on designing FRBR-based user interfaces of Chinese OPAC systems according to what is acquired from the case study in the literature discussed. The results of this study include the current state of FRBR application in the library communities. The five examples selected to study for the application of FRBR in traditional libraries suggests that there is no difference between traditional OPACs and FRBR-based systems when it comes to identifying bibliographic records. On the other hand, the three examples analyzed for understanding the application of FRBR in digital libraries suggest that there are clearer definitions of FRBR entity relations and more matching characteristics of the target data. It may result from the facts that digital libraries usually adopt information organization model from other sources at the same time This study also found that FRBR-based interfaces present the results retrieved in a more organized way, which is clearer and may thus be easier for users to locate what they are looking for. However, this study considers that there are still a few uncertain transformation results which need more check and discussion. Please see also the statement of table 4-1 and table 4-2 in this study. Finally, this study concludes all the results found and suggests a FRBR-based OPAC interfaces. With these interfaces, users can find collections by browsing and by searching. Additionally, users can display the search result limiting by subjects of works, by languages of works, by literary forms of works and by types of manifestations.