page_title: BIBFRAME
section_title: Design
hierarchical_section_title: BIBFRAME / Design
caption_attribution_description: English: illustration of BIBFRAME 2.0 model, with three core levels of abstraction: Work, Instance, and Item
context_page_description: BIBFRAME is a data model for bibliographic description. BIBFRAME was designed to replace the MARC standards, and to use linked data principles to make bibliographic data more useful both within and outside the library community.
context_section_description: BIBFRAME is expressed in RDF and based on three categories of abstraction (work, instance, item), with three additional classes (agent, subject, event) that relate to the core categories.  While the work entity in BIBFRAME may be "considered as the union of the disjoint work and expression entities" in IFLA's Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) entity relationship model, BIBFRAME's instance entity is analogous to the FRBR manifestation entity. This represents an apparent break with FRBR and the FRBR-based Resource Description and Access (RDA) cataloging code. However, the original BIBFRAME model argues that the new model "can reflect the FRBR relationships in terms of a graph rather than as hierarchical relationships, after applying a reductionist technique." Since both FRBR and BIBFRAME have been expressed in RDF, interoperability between the two models is technically possible.
caption: Illustration of BIBFRAME 2.0 model, with three core levels of abstraction (in blue)—Work, Instance, Item—and three related classes (in orange)—Agent, Subject, Event.
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