1. Differentiating Libraries through Enriched User Searching:
FRBR Implementation in Virtua
Back to Basics – and Flying Into the Future
Cataloging 2007, Reykjavik, Iceland, 1-2 February 2007
John Espley, Director for Design, VTLS Inc.

2. VTLS and FRBR Current Virtua Release is Release 48
First FRBR customer (UCL) was in 2003 with Release 41
Important Split for Users
Choose to implement FRBR
Choose to ignore FRBR
Have a mixed catalog with FRBR records and non-FRBR records

3. Virtua and FRBR MARC based system
Mapping from regular cataloging to FRBR
One record to three linked records
Work, Expression, Manifestation
Initial mapping done independently by LC (Tom Delsey) and by VTLS (John Espley) – there was little difference

4. Design Considerations in FRBR
Design is a matter of choices; Good design is a matter of good choices
Five key questions
Store FRBR records?
Have a pure or mixed FRBRized catalog?
What tools are needed to support cataloging?
How to display FRBR records?
What features would users like?

5. Design Considerations in FRBR
Store FRBR Records (or FRBRize at display) ?
Records are cataloged once assessed many times; FRBRizing at access was not optimal
Collocation was easier for stored FRBR records
Validations checks for works, expressions and manifestations was cleaner for stored records
Cataloging was simpler and easily understood

6. Design Considerations in FRBR
Have a Pure or Mixed FRBRized Catalog?
Studies at VTLS and OCLC showed that about 18% of catalog records would gain by FRBRizing
Pure catalogs would be easier to display but would require more effort to convert
Mixed catalogs would take less overhead and provide for gradual (over time) implementation
Mixed catalogs would provide for selective FRBRization if necessary

7. Design Considerations in FRBR
What Tools are Needed to Support Cataloging?
FRBRize button – converts any record to FRBR
Automatic linking between W-E-M records
Context sensitive validation for W-E-M records
Copying “whole” FRBR tree from catalog to catalog
Analyze catalog for FRBR candidates
Batch FRBRize the whole catalog (as in LC music)
UnFRBRize records for distribution & error correction

8. Design Considerations in FRBR
How to Display FRBR Records?
FRBR expandable tree structure
Use of Icons
FRBR reverse tree structure
Music collections
Bound with
See examples that follow later

9. Design Considerations in FRBR
What Features Would Users Like?
Record sensitive displays – standard records display different form FRBR display
Collocation
Multilingual access based on FRBR data
Navigation – hence reverse tree
Circulation holds at W-E-M levels

10. FRBR Examples VTLS Implementation First FRBR customer was UCL in 2003
VTLS continues to create examples to demonstrate the use of FRBR in library catalogs
Links to 12 examples on following slide
The complete PowerPoint presentation can be found at:

11. Click Corresponding button for example
FRBR Examples
Click Corresponding button for example
VTLS Implementation
Cataloging
OPAC
Related Works and
Super Works
Multi-Volume Set
Series
Collected or
Selected Works
Music Analytics
Journal Indexing
Art example
Circulation Requests
at Work/Expression
Serials

12. FRBR Implementation

13. FRBR Demonstration Beethoven Example Things to pay attention to now
Search on Author Beethoven
Select Symphonies no. 6
View record and notice FRBR hierarchy
Things to pay attention to now
Notice the 001 and 004 tags
Notice the 999 tag

14. Beethoven Example
Search for
Beethoven

15. Beethoven Example Select 6th Symphony. (Could also select 5 Beethoven
and then 6th
Symphony)

16. Beethoven Example Result is a FRBR Work record. (Expand tree
by clicking on
the plus sign)

17. Beethoven Example Tree is expanded to display FRBR Expressions.
The 004 tag
is the 001 of
the Work.

18. Beethoven Example Expanding the tree again displays the FRBR
Manifestations.

19. VTLS FRBR Features Single database can have FRBR and non-FRBR records
System is “aware” of record type and changes displays as needed
Display of FRBR records are in tree structure
Local level fields have values of W, E, and M to indicate type of FRBR record
001 and 004 used as linking tags

20. FRBR OPAC

21. FRBR OPAC
Screen captures of Virtua’s Web OPAC, iPortal, are presented to show user displays of a FRBR catalog.

22. FRBR OPAC
Search
by title

23. FRBR OPAC
Select 1st
entry in List

24. FRBR OPAC
Result is a short
record display.
Click on FRBR
tree

25. FRBR OPAC Result is the FRBR tree with brief info from Work and
Expressions

26. FRBR OPAC Expression has been expanded to display brief info from
Manifestations

27. FRBR OPAC
Manifestation
record with
one owning
institution

28. FRBR OPAC
Manifestation
record with
several owning
institutions

29. FRBR Related Works and Super Works

30. Work to Work Links
“… when the modification of a work involves a significant degree of independent … effort, the result is … a new work.” FRBR, final report

31. Work to Work Links Types of different works: Paraphrases Rewritings
Adaptations for children
Musical variations on a theme
Abstracts, digests, and summaries
Adaptations from one form to another
Dramatizations (book to movie, play, etc.)
One graphic art medium to another

32. Super Work
A Super (or Supra) Work is a record that has other works (sub works) related to it
For example, the novel Beau Geste by P. C. Wren is one FRBR Work, and the several movies that have been created from the book are also separate FRBR Works. The Super work is an artificial creation that links all these related works together

33. Super Work
The Work
record for the
“Super” Work
of Beau Geste

34. Super Work The tree expanded to show the “sub works” of the Super Work
The Work
record for
the novel
(a sub work
of the Super
Work)

35. Super Work The Work record for the 1939 movie (a sub work of the Super

36. Super Work The tree expanded to show the Expression and Manifestations
of the 1939
movie
The
Expression
record for the
1939 movie

37. Super Work The 1926 movie also has two other sub works: music and
a Program
book
The
Work record
for the 1926
movie

38. Super Work The tree expanded to show the Manifestations of the 1926
movie
The
Expression
record
for the 1926
movie

39. Super Work The tree expanded to show the Expression and Manifestations
for the music
(a sub work)
of the 1926
movie
The
Manifestation
record
for the music
of the1926
movie

40. FRBR Circulation Requests

41. Circulation Requests
With a traditional system when you had multiple editions of a particular title (Work) you had to place individual requests on each edition (Manifestation).
With a FRBR system, you only have to place a request at the Work or Expression level, and ANY item of ANY Manifestation will satisfy the request.

42. Circulation Requests Search for the title Action and Passion by
Percival
Christopher
Wren

43. Circulation Requests
The Work
Record for
Action and
Passion

44. Circulation Requests The Expression record with the tree Expanded to
show multiple
Manifestations.
You do not
care which
Manifestation
you read.
You just
want one.

45. Circulation Requests The Manifestations in the next few examples
show that
items exist in
different
locations.
This location is
the Main
Library.

46. Circulation Requests
This location
is the
Mann Library

47. Circulation Requests
This copy is
in Green
Valley

48. Circulation Requests This Manifestation has two copies: One
each in the
Main and
Law Libraries.

49. Circulation Requests Instead of placing a Bib level request at each
Manifestation,
place the
request on
the
Expression.

50. Circulation Requests The Request “wizard” is invoked by clicking on
the “Add”
button

51. Circulation Requests Once the request is made, the next time a
qualifying
item is
encountered,
it will be
trapped. In
this example,
an item is
being
discharged
from
circulation.

52. Circulation Requests The Circulation module responds to the Check-in
with a
message that
the item has
a request
on it

53. Circulation Requests The Check-in window displays the items that
have been
checked in
and their
status

54. Circulation Requests To verify that this is the right item (in our
FRBR request
example) we
can either
search for
Action and
Passion or
right click
and select to
view the
item record

55. Circulation Requests The trapped item is for the title Action and
Passion

56. Circulation Requests We can look at the FRBR bibliographic information
by right
clicking and
selecting
Bibliographic
Record

57. Circulation Requests The FBBR tree for Action and Passion with the
Manifestation
of the
trapped item

58. FRBR Serials

59. FRBR Serials (CR) Example
Atlantic Monthly
Five Title Changes (1857, 1932, 1971, 1981, 1993)
11 Bibliographic Records in OCLC

60. FRBR Serials (CR) Example
Each of the
five basic
titles in the
“family” of
Atlantic
Monthly
is a
“sub-work”
under the
Super Work

61. FRBR Serials (CR) Example
Each work has
a linking
field such as
Continues
or…

62. FRBR Serials (CR) Example
Continued by

63. FRBR Serials (CR) Example
The
Expression
level record
has fields
for
frequency

64. FRBR Serials (CR) Example
This is the
Manifestation
level record
which has
information
such as title,
page, imprint,
LCCN and ISSN

65. FRBR Serials (CR) Example
This is another
Manifestation.
In this case, the
microform
edition of the
latest
incarnation of
Atlantic
Monthly is
shown.

66. FRBR Serials (CR) Example
The fully expanded
tree shows
all of the Works,
Expressions and
Manifestations.
There are 11
Manifestations
which match the
11 original
OCLC records.

67. FRBR Serials (CR) Example
What
happens
when you
search for
Atlantic
Monthly?

68. FRBR Serials (CR) Example
The result set is a list
of the records;
Works and
Manifestations
which have the
title Atlantic
Monthly in them.
Selecting the
second entry,
a Manifestation,
results in…

69. FRBR Serials (CR) Example
The tree expanded
to the selected
record

70. FRBR Serials (CR) Example
Notice that at
some point
Atlantic
Monthly
absorbed two
other titles.
If you click
on the
hyperlink for
Putnam’s
magazine…

71. FRBR Serials (CR) Example records that have the title
You get a result set of
records that have the title
of Putnam’s magazine
in them.
If you select the last
entry on this screen…

72. FRBR Serials (CR) Example
You get a FRBR tree
that displays the
“family” of records
for Putnam’s
magazine.

73. FRBR Serials (CR) Example
Selecting any of the
Works displays the
information about
that Work and
expanding the
entries will display
the Expressions
and Manifestations.

74. FRBR Serials (CR) Example
If we had
clicked on the
hyperlink for
Galaxy
instead of
Putnam’s
magazine…

75. FRBR Serials (CR) Example
Again, a result
set since more
than one record
has the title,
Galaxy, in it.
Selecting the
third record…

76. FRBR Serials (CR) Example
Results
in a
non-FRBR
record
since
there is
only one
for the
title,
Galaxy.
There is no
“family” of
records.

77. Questions/Concerns Linking fields
Need clearer, fuller definitions of WEM
Need to look at MARC tag mappings
Rules of Super Works
Can FRBR work with CR?

78. FRBR Benefits For Librarians Collocation Easier cataloging
Better organization to catalog
Easier cataloging
Reduction in cataloging load
Work only cataloged once for all expressions under it
Expression only cataloged once for all manifestations under it
Item cataloging (already simple) remains the same

79. FRBR Benefits Greater Benefits For Users Collocation
Easier to find information
Single search retrieves all related materials even if cataloged in different languages or different subject headings
Easier to see the different expressions of a single work
Gives a better global picture
Easier to find all manifestations

80. FRBR Benefits
Place holds at “Work” or “Expression” level rather than only at manifestation level
Better understanding of relationships between related works or expressions

81. Virtua FRBR at UCL
Universite Catholique De Louvain (UCL) has been a Virtua FRBR customer since December of 2003
UCL moved to a consortium environment in April of 2006

82. UCL feedback on FRBR What UCL “likes” about FRBR
“For the first time we have the ability for a ‘global’ representation of an ‘intellectual’ or ‘artistic’ universe” (English translation of a thought in French)
“Collocation is tremendous”
“Visualization of the content by the end user”
“Accessibility to ‘big’ works like ‘Bible’”
“Very interesting for works of philosophers, great writers, and so on”
“Ability to extract FRBR records in a non FRBR format … for exchange of data”
“Structural relationships from work to work”

83. UCL feedback on FRBR What UCL “doesn’t like” so much
“Difficulty” in getting precise information concerning different electronic ‘format’
“This is linked to the fact that Virtua/FRBR is MARC based and must live with the limitations of MARC”
“No way, at present, to identify a FRBR record in the index entries at the point of display”
VTLS comment : We think that this can be fixed.

84. Advantages of FRBR (for UCL)
FRBR is opening the road to
“New methods for cataloging”
“Analyzing deeply notion of ‘seriality’ and dynamic structure of electronic resources”
“New model for authority data”
“New model for subject authorities, thesauri, subject classification (facets)”

85. Conclusion – Mood at UCL?
Overall : Quite happy with FRBR implementation
After three full years of experience they will never return to the old catalog
All new institutions joining the consortium are required to embrace the FRBR implementation – so there is no further debate about a mixed environement.

86. FRBR – UCL Catalog Other Examples
Other searches to try
Title search: Also sprach Zarathustra
Take first entry on the title list
Title search: Chanson de Roland
Click to next set and select entry with 13 hits; click on 13th record
Title search: Communauté apostolique
Click on first entry
Author search: Zola, Emile
Take entry Zola, Emile, Germinal

87. FRBR Preparation Library Task List Read FRBR documentation
Study FRBR implementations to see benefits for library
If there is interest, start a FRBR program
Have VTLS run “Virtua FRBR Analysis Program” to determine what percentage of database records are good FRBR candidates
General results: 5-18 % range

88. FRBR Preparation Library Task List Make purchasing decision for FRBR
Schedule one day FRBR cataloging training
Automatically convert selected records to FRBR using Virtua programs
Check and correct auto conversion
Open FRBR catalog to public
Let the fun begin
Live happily ever after!!

89. FRBR
For further information or a copy of this presentation, please send an to:
Jack Bazuzi:
Vinod Chachra:
John Espley:
For further information about VTLS, visit: