[WEB4LIB] RE: Yahoo-OCLC toolbar

[K.G. Schneider]

> Remember what FRBR stands for "Functional Requirements for Bibliographic
> Records." It's not a record format... at least not yet. 

Right, it's a conceptual model. 

> And I don't
> think it will be a record format until it first inspires a new set of
> cataloging rules. Quite honestly, AACR is about as un-FRBR as you can
> get. 

I don't think it's the rules that need inspiration, it's the people. We need
a New Testament of cataloging, and not necessarily emanating from
catalogers, either--it's a library-wide issue. 

> information world, but we're far from toay. Also, FRBR is aimed at
> bringing together different versions of the same work; it doesn't help
> with clustering documents that are topically related.

In this sense, it is so within the best of the cataloging traditions it
leaves me breathless. I'd like to think Seymour Lubetsky would have liked
FRBR. And aren't we always far from today? How do we get started, if not
from seeing the world with new eyes?

Karen G. Schneider
kgs at bluehighways.com