Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records

TLDR: The IFLA FRBR study was begun in 1992 in a context of much questioning about how bibliographic records and catalogs would work in changing technology, questions that continue to be relevant even now as technology continues to evolve and reveal new possibilities.

Abstract: Pat Riva is chair of the FRBR Review Group and a member of the IFLA Cataloguing Section Standing Committee. She is also coordonatrice, section des monographies, direction du traitement documentaire de la collection patrimoniale at the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec in Montreal, Québec, Canada. She can be reached by email at patricia.riva<at>banq.qc.ca T he Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) study [1] was published by the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) in 1998, the final report of a study group reporting to the Cataloguing Section. Much more has been written on the origins and context for the study [2]. The IFLA FRBR study was begun in 1992 in a context of much questioning about how bibliographic records and catalogs would work in changing technology, questions that continue to be relevant even now as technology continues to evolve and reveal new possibilities. The concept of defining functional requirements is user-focused at its center; knowledge of the uses (and users) of the information system to be designed provides a basis for making informed decisions on design options. In daily work this reasoning is often implicit; the FRBR study sought to make these considerations explicit. When applied to bibliographic records, this functional requirements concept emphasizes the importance of understanding the function of the data elements being recorded and how these elements each contribute to meeting user needs. Once the fundamental question \" Why? \" has been answered, there is a sound and principled basis for making recommendations on what should be implemented and how. Users of bibliographic systems include both the end-users of information retrieval systems and the information workers who assist end-users and maintain the databases. The needs of both groups were considered by the FRBR study group as they worked to understand how resource discovery systems are used. Uses which may seem infinitely varied on the surface do have common elements. The IFLA Study Group on the functional requirements for bibliographic records (1998) concluded that, in their most general form, there are four basic user tasks: I to find entities that correspond to the user's stated search criteria (i.e., to locate either a single entity or a set of entities in a file or database as the result of a search using an attribute or relationship of the entity); I to identify an entity (i.e., to confirm that the entity described corresponds to the entity sought or to …