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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you! January 18, 2019