FRBR: Coming Soon to Your Library?

Originally presented at the American Library Association Preconference, "Back to the Future", sponsored by the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services, June 25, 2004, Orlando, Florida.The FRBR data model holds great potential for improving access to library resources, but may not affect all libraries in the same way. The Joint Steering Committee for Revision of AACR, assisted by the work of the its Format Variation Working Group, is exploring ways to incorporate FRBR into the next edition of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules to facilitate collocation at the level of the FRBR entity expression. Several library system vendors are also adding FRBR-based functionality to their systems. A combination of these two approaches to FRBR can provide significant benefits to users. Most FRBR entities and attributes are already present in library catalog records, and the influence of FRBR can also be seen in existing library activities. FRBR is thus not something totally foreign, but a fresh, more rigorous way of thinking about what libraries already do that provides a basis for designing new ways to improve users’ access to library resources