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This chapter aims to help librarians understand the underlying rationale for Resource Description and Access (RDA) and recognize the great potential of the Semantic Web for libraries.

It explains the linked data model and Semantic Web technologies in basic, informative terms, and describes how the Semantic Web is constructed. Semantic Web standards and technologies are discussed in detail, including URI, RDF, and ontologies. The study also traces the development of RDA and some of the major library Semantic Web projects. The authors explore how RDA shapes bibliographical data and prepares it for linked data in the Semantic Web. In addition, this study examines what libraries in the United States and the rest of the world have achieved in implementing RDA since its release.

RDA is the correct approach libraries should take.

This is the first and only chapter that covers the development of RDA in other countries as well as in the United States. It is highly informative for anyone who wishes to understand the RDA and Semantic Web and their relevance to libraries in a short period of time.

The purpose of this paper is to provide broad overviews of functional requirements for bibliographic records (FRBR) in the context of Chinese machine-readable cataloguing (CMARC). It examines areas of the FRBR model, FRBR system development, FRBR applications and FRBR research.

A Chinese Koha_LibFRBR testbed was set up to develop three activities: building a FRBR application function library called LibFRBR to maintain FRBRized bibliographic records, implementing a mapping algorithm between CMARC/MARC 21 and FRBR, and designing a new generation Chinese FRBR Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) user interface.

The pilot system implementation demonstrates a workable process with useful output using both automated means (through a Perl module) and manual means (through a cataloguing interface (CI)). The study shows that existing poor Relator Code system and the maintenance of very little authority data in libraries in Taiwan are disadvantages in utilizing the FRBR model.

The software modules developed by this research have been released in GitHub through Koha-Taiwan distributed with a General Public License for further application within the Koha community.

The concrete research outcomes include: providing workable practices for CMARC coding information in FRBR, developing FRBRization of Chinese Koha library management systems, developing FRBR tools including LibFRBR, an application function library used to convert bibliographic records into FRBRized structures in Koha, and FRBR CI for library cataloguers and providing a preliminary evaluation on the views of library cataloguers and OPAC users.

The article discusses the future of the MARC formats and outlines how future cataloguing practice and bibliographic records might look. Background and basic functionality of the MARC formats are outlined, and it is pointed out that MARC is manifest in several different formats. This is illustrated through a comparison between the MARC21 format and the Danish MARC format “danMARC2”. It is argued that present cataloguing codes and MARC formats are based primarily on the Paris principles and that “functional requirements for bibliographic records” (FRBR) would serve as a more solid and user‐oriented platform for future development of cataloguing codes and formats. Furthermore, it is argued that MARC is a library‐specific format, which results in neither exchange with library external sectors nor inclusion of other texts being facilitated. XML could serve as the technical platform for a model for future registrations, consisting of some core data and different supplements of data necessary for different sectors and purposes.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the concept of the “musical work”, and its consequences for library/information provision.

Analysis of journal and monograph literature is supported by interviews with music editors, examination of documents, and self‐reflection on music cataloguing practice.

The nature of a musical work is shown to be complex, and influenced by many contextual factors. Phenomenological and ontological models can prove useful in understanding practical issues of information provision. The work of music editors has a strong relation to that of cataloguers and curators. Bibliographic models such as FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) can gain from, and contribute to, music information, through the centrality of the concept of “work”.

The literature review is selective rather than comprehensive.

The study provides direct guidance for library/information practitioners in the music domain, and an insight into issues of relevance to information provision in any specialized subject.

The paper is a contribution to the literature on the application of philosophical and conceptual analysis to documents and bibliographic entities in specialized subject areas, and to domain analysis.

The nature and purpose of the catalogue has been the focus of considerable and vigorous debate during the past decade. This article attempts to identify those topics which have been the most significant causes of the debate and discusses: the need for catalogues; users and non‐users; the nature of the bibliographic record and catalogue entry; the development of UK and LC MARC; standards, including exchange formats, the development of the ISBD, and the concept of UBC (Universal Bibliographic Control); the Anglo‐American Cataloguing Rules and the controversy over the implementation of AACR2; COM catalogues; subsets of the MARC record; co‐operatives, networks and resource sharing; and the development of subject access methods better suited to COM and online catalogues. The relevance of catalogue research activities at Bath University and elsewhere is highlighted.

The paper performs a thought experiment on the concept of a record based on the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records and library system functions, and concludes that if we want to develop a functional bibliographic record we need to do it within the context of a flexible, functional library systems record structure. The article suggests a new way to look at the library systems record that would allow libraries to move forward in terms of technology but also in terms of serving library users.

Today, VTLS is a comprehensive, integrated solution to the automation requirements of academic, public, and special libraries around the world. No two libraries are alike; no two regions are alike. VTLS recognizes these differences and offers libraries the flexibility of numerous options to configure the system that best meets their functional and financial needs.

In 1998, the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) model which is composed of four entities (work, expression, manifestation and item) and their associative relationships (primary, responsibility and subject), was proposed by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). The FRBR model can be deployed as a logical framework for proceeding metadata analysis and developing metadata format. This paper presents a case study of the National Palace Museum (NPM) in Taipei to examine the feasibility of the FRBR model. Based on the examination of case study at the NPM, the FRBR model is proven to be a useful and fundamental framework for metadata analysis and implementation. Findings show that the FRBR model is helpful in identifying proper metadata elements organization and their distribution over the FRBR entities. The model is more suitable for media‐centric and association‐rich contents. However, in order to refine the FRBR model as a common framework for metadata, it would also require supportive mechanisms for management responsibility relationships for the workflow consideration and refine the distinction between work and expression entity.

In the 1990s, North American archivists and records managers shifted some of their concern with electronic records and record keeping systems to conducting research about the nature of these records and systems. This essay describes one of the major research projects at the University of Pittsburgh School of Information Sciences, supported with funding from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. Specifically, the essay focuses on the project's four main products: recordkeeping functional requirements, production rules to support the requirements, metadata specifications for record keeping, and the warrant reflecting the professional and societal endorsement of the concept of the recordkeeping functional requirements.

Currently all organisations are being urged to become “information conscious”. Technology is being rapidly developed to aid and support such an approach and tremendous attention and publicity is being directed towards how businesses will operate in the future — the 21st century.