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IFLA Group Posts Draft on Authority
Records' Functional Requirements

By Linda Gonzalez
If the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) leaves you wishing for more functional requirements, there's good news for you. The IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) Working Group on Functional Requirements and Numbering of Authority Records (FRANAR) has posted a draft, for review by any interested party, of the Functional Requirements for Authority Records (FRAR) on the IFLA Web site at www.ifla.org/VII/d4/wg-franar.htm. Any comments concerning this new conceptual model should be sent by October 28, to Glenn Patton, the FRANAR Working Group's chair (pattong@oclc.org).

The group's objectives are to provide an understanding of how authority files currently function and to clarify the concepts underlying authority records and the files in which they reside. Authority records, electronic or not, are key to maintaining the integrity of a library catalog, enabling users to effectively search a library's resources. The group considered the needs of both library staff creating, maintaining and using an authority file, and library patrons whose use of the authority file may be indirect. Five functions of the authority file are outlined in FRAR. The authority file:

  • Documents decisions made by catalogers when choosing appropriate access points or formulating new access points for bibliographic records.
  • Provides information that can help distinguish one person, corporate body or work from another and may help the cataloger determine when a new access point is needed. It may also serve as a reference tool for other library staff.
  • Can be used to control the forms of access points in bibliographic records and enforce consistency. In an automated environment, software may change any bibliographic access point when its form in the related authority record is changed.
  • Supports access to bibliographic records by leading a user from the form of name as searched to the form of name actually used in bibliographic records. This is perhaps the most important function from a user's perspective.
  • May be used to link bibliographic records and authority records to allow the translation of access points into whatever language and script most appropriate to the user.

The first charge to the FRANAR Working Group was to define functional requirements of authority records. FRAR is the result of the group's efforts with respect to this. Similar to FRBR, FRAR defines user tasks and the entities of interest to users of authority records. These entities each have certain attributes (or characteristics), and each entity is related to one or more other entities in a variety of ways. For those who have read FRBR, the entities will be familiar: person, corporate body, work, expression, manifestation, item, concept, object, event and place. FRAR adds a few additional entities: family, identifier, access point, rules and agency. Name, an attribute of persons and corporate bodies in FRBR, gets entity status in FRAR and has varied relationships to the other entities. For example, FRAR notes that Name is related to Person in any one of the following ways: real name, pseudonym, name before marriage, married name, secular name, name in religion, earlier name, later name and alternative linguistic form.

The tasks of a user of authority data sound a bit like the catalog user tasks that FRBR lists, but they are not exactly the same:

  • Find an entity or set of entities matching stated search criteria (i.e., an attribute or relationship of the entity).
  • Identify an entity (i.e., to confirm that the entity represented in a retrieved record is the entity sought, or to distinguish between multiple entities with similar characteristics).
  • Contextualize, that is, to place a person, corporate body, work, etc., in context, or to clarify the relationships between multiple entities or those between a person, corporate body, etc., and a name by which that entity is known.
  • Justify the authority record creator's reasons for choosing the name or form of name on which an access point is based.

Creating authority records and building authority files that best enable users to successfully complete these tasks is one of the most important goals of library technical services staff.

Though many of the entities in FRAR are the same as those in FRBR, some of their attributes are different, considering that authority information has different functions and uses than bibliographic data does. Various entity and attribute definitions in FRAR were derived from several different IFLA publications, including the Guidelines for Authority Records and References, but especially FRBR. However, FRAR modifies some definitions as a result of the findings of the FRANAR Working Group.

This draft of the FRAR conceptual model encompasses all types of authority records. However, the detailed analysis of entity attributes and relationships between entities is focused primarily on name, name- title and title headings. A separate, new IFLA Working Group will examine subject authorities in depth.

The working group had two charges other than producing FRAR: studying the feasibility of an International Standard Authority Data Number (ISADN) and serving as the official IFLA liaison to groups interested in authority files. The working group has deferred the first of these until FRAR is complete, but has been maintaining contacts with other communities concerned with authority records and authority files, especially archival, museum and rights management organizations. Work on FRAR influenced the second edition of the International Council on Archives' International Standard Archival Authority Record for Corporate Bodies, Persons, and Families, published in 2004.

In helping to clarify and document the concepts behind the authority file and the reasons staff and patrons use authority records, FRAR has the potential to impact future developments in the rules and practices concerning authority work and the creation and maintenance of authority files. For more details, please review FRAR itself. Slides from the presentation, "FRAR: Extending FRBR Concepts to Authority Data," by Glenn Patton are available among the presentations from OCLC's May 2005 FRBR invitational workshop, posted at www.oclc.org/research/events/frbr-workshop/program.htm. The presentation provides a summary of FRAR's key points and concepts.

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February 27, 2008
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