1. Introducing IFLA-LRM Gordon Dunsire, Chair, RSC
Presented at “Resource description for the 21st Century”
13 August 2018, Canberra, Australia
January 18, 2019

2. Linked data diagrams Entity “Stuff”
A “thing”; identified by a Uniform/Internationalized Resource Identifier
Entity
A relationship/property/predicate: has direction (subject – predicate – object)
property
label
A “string” or literal data that can be displayed to humans
“Stuff”
January 18, 2019

3. LRM 2017: Library Reference Model
International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA)
LRM consolidates the FR family of models
1998: FR for Bibliographic Records (FRBR)
2009: FR for Authority Data (FRAD)
2010: FR for Subject Authority Data (FRSAD)
2011: Working Group on Aggregates report
January 18, 2019

4. LRM as a model High-level conceptual model
Entity-relationship structure
Intended for refinement by implementations
By sub-typing entities, relationships, and attributes
January 18, 2019

5. LRM entities Retained: Work, Expression, Manifestation, Item, Person**
Added:
Agent, Collective Agent, Nomen, Place, Time-span
+ Res (super-class of other entities)
January 18, 2019

6. Res entity Super-class of all other LRM entities
=> What applies to Res applies to every other entity
Attributes: Category, Note
High-level relationships (associations) with other entities
January 18, 2019

7. Nomen entity A “name” (designation) of an entity All things have names
has appellation
Res
Nomen
All things have names
has nomen string
Nomen
“Nomen string”
January 18, 2019

8. “Used in works for children”
Nomen entity
is appellation of
Nomen
Person
“Carroll, Lewis”
has nomen string
“Used in works for children”
has context
of use
Authority File (Work)
has scheme of nomen
January 18, 2019

9. Agent entity 1 2+ Real person who lives or is assumed to have lived
has sub-class
has sub-class
Collective
Agent
Person 1 2+
Real person who lives or is assumed to have lived
January 18, 2019

10. Manifestation statement
LRM-E4-A4
A statement appearing in the manifestation and
deemed to be significant for users to understand
how the resource represents itself.
… normally transcribed from a source … in a
manifestation. Transcription conventions are
codified by each implementation.
Principle of representation
User task: Identify
January 18, 2019

11. Work transformations LRM-R22 Work is transformation of Work
Change of the scope or editorial policy (as in a serial or aggregating work), the genre or literary form (dramatization, novelization), target audience (adaptation for children), or style (paraphrase, imitation, parody)
January 18, 2019

12. LRM and RDA
RDA was based on most of FRBR, some of FRAD, all of FRSAD (but mostly out of scope), and none of WGoA
LRM is the opportunity to fill in gaps and reconcile incoherencies
January 18, 2019

13. LRM development Close monitoring by RDA Steering Commitee
Cross-membership of FRBR Review Group
RSC submission to world-wide review
RSC took decision to align RDA with the LRM following outcomes of w-w review in 2016
January 18, 2019

14. RDA
“RDA is a package of data elements, guidelines, and instructions for creating library and cultural heritage resource metadata that are well-formed according to international models for user-focussed linked data applications.”
The RDA data ecosystem is summed up in this sentence introducing the RDA Board’s announcement of RDA’s strategic directions.
The RDA package is delivered by an infrastructure of two interacting services.
The human-facing components, including the guidelines and instructions, are the Toolkit.
The data-facing components are contained in the Registry.
Applying the data capture and storage techniques in RDA Toolkit to the data architecture in the RDA Registry produces well-formed data for RDA applications.
RDA Toolkit provides the user-focussed elements, guidelines, and instructions.
RDA Registry provides the infrastructure for well-formed, linked, RDA data applications.

15. Is LRM suitable for RDA?
LRM “a high-level conceptual model … intended as a guide or basis on which to elaborate cataloguing rules”
RDA guidance, instructions, elements
“operates at a greater level of generality than FRBRoo, which seeks to be comparable in terms of generality with CIDOC CRM”
RDA cultural heritage communities
LRM “this model is developed very much with semantic web technologies in mind”
RDA linked data communities

16. Impact of LRM
More entities: Nomen, Place, Timespan, Agent, Collective Agent
Shift from attributes to relationships
LRM high-level entities, attributes, and relationships intended for refinement
RDA is an implementation of the model
January 18, 2019

17. IFLA LRM and RDA entities
Res
is sub-class of
RDA Entity = Any RDA Thing
Covers all other types of entity
RDA
Entity
has appellation*
Nomen W
is created by
Place E
Agent
The LRM uses a super-entity, "Res", to model high-level relationships and attributes for all other entities. In RDA, the super-entity "RDA Entity" is used in place of Res for all other RDA entities. RDA Entity is a sub-type (sub-class in RDF) of Res.
This RDF graph shows new RDA entities taken from the LRM: Nomen, Place, Time-span, Collective Agent, and Agent. Current RDA entities are labelled only with their initials. The graph also shows the high-level relationships between the new and current entities.
* The “appellation” relationship does not normally apply to Nomen itself: Nomens do not have nomens.
** The only RDA entity which does not fit without significant modification is Person. In the LRM, the definition of this entity restricts it to a human being, and non-humans including animals, fictitious and legendary beings, and natural phemomena, are excluded.
The integrated semantic structure of the LRM and RDA entities allows the RDA relationships to be refinements of the high-level LRM relationships, as element sub-types (sub-properties in RDF).
is sub-class of
is associated with M
Time-span
Collective
Agent I
is modified by
P** F C

18. LRM challenges for RDA
Definition of Person entity excludes “non-human personages”
RDA communities forewarned in 2013
Treatment of aggregates and serials
Beyond AACR2 …
LRM optimized for linked data
No mention in RDA, but part of strategy
January 18, 2019

19. LRM challenges for RDA Addition of Nomen entity
Very strange … but very useful for the 4-fold path (recording methods)
and authority control
Addition of manifestation statement element
Separating transcription from recording
January 18, 2019

20. Thank you!
January 18, 2019