[open-bibliography] Is FRBR too complicated?

Mon May 24 00:39:46 UTC 2010

Quoting William Waites <william.waites at okfn.org>:

> ... is a conceptual model trying to make information retrieval
> efficient
>
> ... presupposes a high level of understading of the model to
> perform information storage
>
> ... it's not a simple model

William, I'm about to do another blog post on FRBR about reusability,  
but what it comes down to for me is that the Group1 entities are  
really a single entity with subparts. I have only minor quibbles with  
Groups 2 & 3. The main problem with Group 1 is that the entities are  
interdependent and cannot exist without each other, which to me makes  
them "not-entities" but parts of some whole. You have to keep in mind  
that the folks who developed FRBR have no experience with data  
definition and thought they were creating something designed for a  
relational database (but I have proof that most of them have never  
created a database of any kind in real life). Keeping in mind that  
FRBR is a conceptual model (and possibly not a great one), we should  
feel free to make it work better rather than follow it slavishly.  
Which is why I would prefer to not make any reference to FRBR in the  
UI, but to make use of it in the background if it turns out to make  
sense to do so.

kc

-- 
Karen Coyle
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