/about/frbrization
Type: /type/page
body: value: <h1>Work Sets in the Open Library (FRBR-ization)</h1>
<p>The thing called &quot;FRBR-izing&quot; is really the creation of a set of 
  records that all represent the same work. So rather than having a display that 
  shows all of the different editions of the work separately:</p>
<img border="1" src="http://www.kcoyle.net/temp/tomsaw_ol.JPG" width="577" height="397"> 
<p>... you have a single display for the work, that links to all of the editions. 
  Different systems display this differently. Here is the OCLC FictionFinder display:</p>
<img border="1" src="http://www.kcoyle.net/temp/fic_finder1.JPG" width="888" height="277"> 
<p>And here is the beginning of the display of all of the many editions:</p>
<img  border="1" src="http://www.kcoyle.net/temp/fic_find2.JPG">
<p>This creates a two-tired database with Works and Editions. (Note: Editions 
  are called &quot;Manifestations&quot; in library lingo.) The two big questions 
  are:</p>
<ol>
  <li>What is a work? </li>
<li>How is this hierarchy represented in the database in a way that is efficient for searching and for display?</li></ol>
<p>Note that FRBR-ization affects only a small percentage of bibliographic records. 
  <a href="http://www.oclc.org/research/publications/archive/2003/lavoie_frbr.pdf">OCLC's 
  statistics</a> show that 78% of the items in WorldCat are unique Works. Only 
  1% of Works have up to 7 Editions, and only 30,000 in their database have more than 20 Editions. </p>


<h3>What is a work?</h3>
<p>There is no definitive answer to what is a work, especially when it comes to changes in format, such as a book that has become a screenplay and then is made into a movie. But since we only have books in the OL database at the moment, the task is somewhat simpler: bring together books that are essentially the same text. Basically, the elements that define a work are:</p>
<ul><li>The title of the (original) work</li>
<li>The primary author</li>
</ul>
<p>This isn't quite as simple as it seems because ideally one would also bring together different translations of the same work, and of course those do not have the same title. In some records that we receive from libraries there will be a special &quot;work title&quot; that contains the original title of the work regardless of the language of the translation.</p>
<pre>
  Mann, Thomas
    [Zauberberg]
	Magic Mountain.
	
  Mann, Thomas
    [Zauberberg]
	La Montagna incantata.
</pre>
<p>There are also Works that are the same but have been printed with different 
  titles at different times or in different countries, such as the works of Shakespeare 
  and Harry Potter. The work titles (called &quot;uniform titles&quot; in library 
  lingo) are unfortunately not used consistently even in library records, and 
  don't exist at all in records from our other sources. At some point we will 
  have to rely on users to bring together works that do not get identified algorithmically. 
  We also have a set of ISBNs from LibraryThing to use, and could probably make 
  some use of the xISBN service from OCLC. This, however, only helps us with works 
  that have an ISBN.</p>
<p>In terms of an algorithm, OCLC's <a href="http://www.oclc.org/research/software/frbr/">work 
  set algorithm is available.</a> However, it makes use of some data elements 
  that we will not have, in particular those that OCLC derived from LC Authority 
  records. </p>
<p>The Work-set display and the Edition display will make use of different fields. A page on the fields and display is <a href="http://openlibrary.org/about/work_edition">here</a>.

<p>It is quite possible that the current edition matching algorithm that we use 
  can be adapted to determine works in a way that approximates the OCLC results. 
  This won't be as accurate as the OCLC algorithm, but we can use OCLC's <a href="http://fictionfinder.oclc.org">FictionFinder</a> 
  database as a test set against which we can measure our results. </p>

  
<h3>The Database Design</h3>  

<p>There are undoubtedly many different ways that we could design a database to support FRBR.  Some possible designs are: </p>
<dl>
  <dt><strong>Work-centric access and display</strong></dt>
  <dd>In this scenario, there is a work record that contains the primary author(s), 
    the title, and subject information. General searching goes against this Work 
    record, which contains links (probably identifiers) to all of the related 
    Edition records. This is how FictionFinder appears to work. In FictionFinder, 
    searches on elements specific to a particular edition (e.g. the name of an 
    illustrator) do not return results. Individual editions can be displayed in 
    detail from the display, however. This design is very different from what 
    we have today in infogami and may not be feasible. It also requires a Work 
    record for each Work in the database, including those that are comprised of 
    only one Edition.</dd>
  <dt><strong>Edition-centric access, Work-centric display</strong></dt>
  <dd>This design would index edition records much as they are indexed today, 
    but would bring together records for the same work in a tiered display. There 
    could be a minimal Work record that has approximately the same functionality 
    that the Author record does today. With the retrieval of any record in a Work 
    set, the Work record would be displayed with all of the editions subordinate 
    to it on the page. This is usually done with a table that contains an entry 
    for each edition with its equivalent Work, so that the Work is displayed in 
    the place of the Edition. This requires de-duplicating the entired retrieved 
    set so that the Work record is displayed only once even though multiple editions 
    for the same work are retrieved. The Work record then can be used to retrieve 
    all of the edition records based on their having the same Work ID. This design 
    probably requires a Work record for each Work in the database, including those 
    that are comprised of only one Edition.What this design does not easily provide 
    is a display of the number of editions on the Work page. It also presents 
    some potential performance problems which would have to be studied.</dd>
  <dt><strong>Edition-centric access, Edition-centric display, Optional Work display</strong></dt>
  <dd>This would mimic the current treatment of Editions and Authors. Retrieval 
    would retrieve Editions and would display Editions. However, there would be 
    something in the display of retrieved records that would allow you to move 
    to a Work view if it is available for that record (a displayed link or button). 
    One advantage of this is that it would only require a Work record for the 
    books that have more than one Edition (guesstimated at 25% of the database). 
    The disadvantage is that Works will be less obvious to users and most of the 
    users will still see multiple editions in displays for that small percentage 
    of works that has many editions (like all of our Mark Twain examples). </dd>
</dl>
<p>Note that based on the OCLC statistics, if we create a Work record for each work (even those that have a single edition) we will increase the number of records in the database by about 75%.	Creating a Work record only when there are multiple editions, however, may add complexities to display.</p>
title: FRBRization in the Open Library
m: edit