Comments on: Bringing FRBR Down to Earth…

By: Lukas Koster

Lukas Koster — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:09:34 +0000

I would like to point out one more but quite important issue with FRBR. As is the case with most conceptual models that describe a specific area of interest, created by experts in that very area, it is a shy and introvert model. It looks to the inside, and tries its very best to cover all possible situations in the area. But the experts tend to ignore the fact, deliberately or not, that there always is an outside world that entities within the model are linked to. That’s understandable of course, otherwise each conceptual model would end up describing the whole world. Also, the purpose of the model is always to get to a practical and efficient implementation. If the eventual end users of the model’s implementation need to have access to related things outside the implementation/model, then they have to use other means.
In the current web based information technology world, linked data developments etc. it’s getting easier to link to all kinds of information on the web outside the scope of the system you are using.

FRBR is a model to describe bibliographic data and metadata, created by librarians. It is only focused on things that libraries used to have. But the old library world is changing. Information (the core business of libraries I guess) is no longer bound to physical items in central locations.
So I think FRBR is not so bad as such, but as said by a number of people here, the way it’s implemented is important. And I would like to add, that the FRBR model and the FRBR implementations should have clear and open options for relationships with things on the outside. Only that way can the FRBR conceptual model be implemented in a useful manner.

By: Rob Styles

Rob Styles — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:36:45 +0000

Well, thanks you all so much for the comments and links. I’ve been reading (and re-reading) to try and keep up as well as moving forward with some real data modeling work.

I think the main thrust of what I was trying to say still stands, that an abstract model is much less use in practical application than a specific one. I have no issue with FRBR, I agree it has some value, but with so many real-world problems struggling to fit into it my concern is that people will model with the 4 WEMI classes directly – and that would be rather limiting.

By: Douglas Campbell

Douglas Campbell — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:04:20 +0000

Oops, I meant the relationship between the book and the movie in FRBR-land.

By: Douglas Campbell

Douglas Campbell — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:03:11 +0000

I’m with Norberto. I think your practical model is ‘as well as’ FRBR, not ‘instead of’.

FRBR was only ever supposed to provide a theoretical model so we could our heads around the relationships. I always assumed there would many models that manifest it (if you will) into to practical applications. Your model is one such model; its scope/terminology happens to mostly focuss on books and movies (which is fine for that kind of an application). The article “Assessing FRBR in Dublin Core Application Profiles” in Ariadne http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue58/chaudhri/ looks at how other models do/don’t map onto FRBR.

The DCAM Dublin Core Abstract Model is similar to FRBR except it is clear it is only abstract (because it says ‘abstract is my middle name’). Communities are then building models that they need on top of that theoretical model, chopping bits out that are redundant in their context, adding other bits in.

I wonder if maybe you got the relationship between the book and the novel wrong – you said in FRBR-land they are connected at the expression level, but I think they are connected at the work level – Wuthering Heights re-imagined by William Wyler is a related work, the fact he used the book expression to arrive at that new work isn’t material. Therefore, the FRBR model achieves the same as your alternative. But I’m no FRBR expert.

That last paragraph, while stupidly complex, proves the worth of FRBR – that we are ABLE to discuss these relationships and compare models. Before FRBR there was “um, all these models seem to be similar but I can’t quite put my finger on it”. It’s a stake in the ground we can talk around.

Of course FRBR isn’t ‘right’ or ‘finished’ as there are still lots of questions. Theoretical frameworks evolve over time as our understanding increases, especially as we test them out in the real world, using models like yours, and having discussions like this.

By: Lukas Koster

Lukas Koster — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:53:51 +0000

Rob, FRBR is a conceptual model, implementations of the model can use everyday terms like “story”, just like you describe.
As a matter of coincidence, I was just thinking of writing a blog post more or less along the same lines, when I read your post. I have just published mine, about books, e-books, FRBR, that touches on the same topics from a different angle (http://commonplace.net/2009/11/is-an-e-book-a-book/). I use the term “story” there as a definition of unit of content (work).

By: Is an e-book a book? @ CommonPlace.Net

Is an e-book a book? @ CommonPlace.Net — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:24:32 +0000

[...] when he talks about “stories” and “editions” in his recent blog post “Bringing FRBR Down to Earth…” I think. I will define the “story” concept in a different way [...]

By: Norberto Manzanos

Norberto Manzanos — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:15:56 +0000

Answer to Karen Coyle. I have a different point of view on the Collected Works problem. Let me be give another example. The book (?) Dits et ecrits, by Michel Foucault, is a collection of all his articles, conferences and interviews. The english Wikipedia does not include it among his works, but the spanish version does. Actually, it is not in the paragraph entitled works, but in the books paragraph. Perhaps this detail give us something to think about. Anyway, as a user (not a professional one in this case), I prefer to find Dits et ecrits among the other dozens of works. If I want to obtain the whole book, that's a shorter way than choicing from a hundred of titles and then arrive to the book. But I could be interested in just one article (a known item) that was refered to me as an article, i.e., a work. If I was a researcher on Foucault's ideas I'd prefer a chronological bibliography with all his works detailed, books and articles. One could imagine several kind of user which different needs. And current systems may know (actually Google knows) which kind of user we are and show the information they hold accordingly. The other question is the authorship of the "Collected Works". Who authored Dits et ecrits? Obviously, Foucault did. But what about the work the publisher did when collecting, annoting, etc? It's not the same task he or she did with the works the author originally wrote for publication. One could imagine many situations in which this kind of authorship becomes more important than the real authorship. Specially when the publisher has made a selection which implies a particular point of view. I think that Collected Works are a special kind of work, which share many characteristics with written works, but some important differences. That way the authorship of a Collected Works implicitly would have a different semantic than "normal" authorship. An automated system may know that and act accordingly.

By: Norberto Manzanos

Norberto Manzanos — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:02:23 +0000

Very interesting post. My remarks: 1) The FRBR entities are too abstract, that's true. But if we want to think bibliographic and information problems in a scientific way, we need such kind of abstractions. 2) Anyway, the objection can be addressed to expression, manifestation and item. Instead, the word work is a very common word. Not only is part of bibliographic technical vocabulary, considering the use of it that Lubetsky have done, but as a word that everyone uses when referring an artistic or intellectual entity. It's a restrictive use of a brother and ancient word that means "something done". Think about the many "Complete Works" or "Selected Works". They could include novels, short stories, letters, songs, paintings, etc. 3) Your terminology is good when it describes some of the concrete features of these entities. Nevertheless not every work is a story, not every story is a work. I think that the problem with FRBR is that the analysis stops at the higher level of abstraction. The problem with that classes is the lack of subclasses. Story would be one of the subclasses of work. Song would be another. Musical performance, a subclass of expression. And so on. I think that the attribute Form of a work is a big mistake. A novel is not the form a work takes. It is the work, but a specific kind of work. It shares with other works some abstract features but has many others which deserve attention. Relationships gain expressiveness with this approach. A Movie (a kind of work) can be a version of a novel, but it can't be a version of other kind of works, a picture, for example.

By: Terry Willan

Terry Willan — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:55:07 +0000

Hi Rob, To repeat a quote I shared with you the other day, ‘Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful.’ http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_E._P._Box
I’ve long had misgivings about the FRBR abstractions because of the irreconcilable disagreements about how to define them, especially Work and Expression. They make FRBR seem hopelessly impractical. Your ground-up approach seems more likely to be useful. It also feels more in tune with the ‘everything is miscellaneous’ view of the world. Would you relate low-level classes through superclasses, e.g. paperback, hardback, PDF e-book, etc, as sub-classes of book perhaps?

By: Karen Coyle

Karen Coyle — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:35:31 +0000

The FRBR relationships will make much of this possible… but what always trips me up is that manifestations are often not 1=1 with works. In fact, I think we have a serious problem in that libraries are trying to organize packages of things (I’ve said before that basically everything in a library is of the dreaded “kit” form) as if they were works. This is why hanging the manifestation off of the expression doesn’t make sense — usually, the expression is *in* the manifestation but it is not the whole manifestation. There’s a relationship there, but it’s not a clean hierarchy. FRBR allows us to design relationships between works, but then we’re left with this (usually) physical item created by a publisher as a product, with front matter, introductions, illustrations, indices, covers, a certain pagination, etc.

To visualize this, look up Herman Melville in wikipedia. Then do a search on his name as author in WorldCat. Wikipedia gives you a nice list of works. WorldCat gives you hundreds of publications, and page one has “Collected Poems” “Shorter Novels” “Letters”. Publisher products don’t fit into the FRBR Work concept. So we have to decide if library catalog will focus on the published package or the content of the published package. Making a FRBR Work out of “Collected Poems” doesn’t make sense to me, and I doubt if it helps the user. Creating a library catalog with Works that point to published packages sounds interesting, but it’s not what library catalogs have ever been (and would be much more expensive than what they are today).