Page 198 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 42

Extended English abstracts of articles published in the Chinese edition of Journal of Library Science in China 2016 Vol.42 197

replacement of MARC format,started in 2011. BIBFRAME proposed model was issued at the end
of 2012,with four main/core classes Creative work,Instance,Authority and Annotation. Creative
work class and Instance class are considered a simplification of FRBR’s WEMI model. Authority
class continues the tradition of authority control in librarianship. Annotation class is a mixture
of elements other than bibliographies and authorities,including emerging internet things such as
cover arts and online reviews,and library holdings information.
BIBFRAME vocabulary was released at the beginning of 2013 and basically established in
2014. LC and other implementers experimented it for more than one year. Based on discussion in
experiments and suggestions from experts,LC had issued five revision proposals since June 2015
and announced seven BIBFRAME 2.0 drafts in October 2015. According to the proposals and
drafts,BIBFRAME vocabulary will evolve in various aspects with the most noticeable adjustment
of core classes,i.e. cancel of Authority and Annotation and introduction of Item.
The paper attempts to analyze the significant improvements in BIBFRAME’s LD practice as
showed in the evolution of its core classes,and hopes that it could help catalogers and other people
with a better understanding of LD and its development in bibliographic application.
1) Traditional authority control in librarianship is mainly dependent on the authorized form of
names,i.e. authorized access points. Due to the diversity of languages,it’s difficult to agree on the
authorized form between countries. Application of authority control outside libraries is even more
difficult. Concepts and things are identified by URIs in LD,without relying on the authorized
access points. URI can be compatible with authorized form in “Preferred label” meanwhile. Cancel
of Authority class makes clear that name authority is only a property of things in the context of
LD.
2) Reuse of mature vocabularies is a generally accepted best practice in LD. At the beginning
of BIBFRAME development,LC used single namespace and concerned about the persistence of
external namespaces. As Web Annotation Data Model will be a W3C Recommendation,progress of
RDF vocabularies in recent one or two years makes LC change its practice. Cancel of Annotation
class confirms vocabulary reuse. BIBFRAME 2.0 drafts also use rdf:/rdfs: namespaces and
show that BIBFRAME will focus on the core bibliographic data. For fully converting of MARC
data and accurate identification of resource,BIBFRAME will inevitably reuse partly other
vocabularies,such as EBUCore/PBCore,for complex properties of special resources.
3) In Bibliographic Framework Initiative General Plan,holdings are among the requirements
to support bibliographic description. Holding is a data type used for ILS’s circulation module.
Newly added Item class is a redefinition of holding-related sub-classes of original Annotation
class. Unlike ILS which bases on bibliographic and holding/item records,LD uses triple to identify
resource and needs no records. Simple and compound items in BIBFRAME 2.0 leap over the clear
distinction of bibliographic and holdings format/record,and can reveal item information in a more
flexible,lightweight and accurate way.
When initiating BIBFRAME modeling,LC’s major focus is “to translate the MARC 21 format