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Modeling FRBR entities and their relationships with TEI: A Look at HallerNet bibliographic descriptions
The aim of this paper is to discuss the mapping between FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) and TEI carried out to create bibliographic records and their relationships. Although some work has been done in this area (Hawkins, 2008), on the differences about database modeling and markup modeling (Eide, 2015) or XML and linked data (Ciotti and Tomasi, 2016), this paper will argue that the TEI Guidelines may be suitable for creating bibliographic records and their relationships.
FRBR (IFLA, 2008) defines four bibliographic entities (Group 1: work, expression,
manifestation and item) amongst other entities such as Person, Concept, Event,
Place, etc. while the TEI allows to encode “structured bibliographic citation[s]”
with <biblStruct> and “a loosely-structured bibliographic citation[s]” with
<bibl>. For illustration purposes, this paper will use HallerNet portal
devoted to Albrecht von Haller (Bern, 1708-1777), a key figure of the Swiss
Enlightenment, and his circle of friends and collaborators. The website comprises
both digital editions and a large collection of 35.600 bibliographic records amongst
other types of objects. HallerNet has simplified and adapted the FRBR abstract model
to define only two bibliographic entities — due to the current state of the
bibliographic records — and their relationships: a work (a
distinct intellectual or artistic creation) and its manifestations (the physical embodiment) using the TEI elements
<bibl> and <biblStruct> respectively and four potential relationships
(embodimentOf, isPartOf, isAReviewOf and isASuccessorOf)
encoded with <relatedItem>.
Since the TEI Guidelines cover both metadata and data, its vocabulary and syntax can go beyond the representation of texts and facilitate the creation of bibliographic catalogues that group records into “families” based upon some shared characteristics – e.g. same content in different languages or different editions of the same work. Although the abstract model discussed here is a preliminary work that needs to be implemented in the near future, we expect that it will enable further browsing and discovery of records.
Bibliographic references
Ciotti, Fabio and Francesca Tomasi, «Formal Ontologies, Linked Data, and TEI
Semantics »,
Journal of the Text Encoding Initiative [Online],
Issue 9 | September 2016 - December 2017. URL:
http://journals.openedition.org/jtei/1480
Eide, Øyvind, «Ontologies, Data Modeling, and TEI»,
Journal of the Text Encoding Initiative [Online],
Issue 8 | December 2014 - December 2015. http://jtei.revues.org/1191
Hawkins, Kevin S, «FRBR Group 1 Entities and the TEI Guidelines», 2008 TEI Annual Members Meeting, held November 6–8 2008, in London, England, United Kingdom.
IFLA Study Group on the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records,
Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records: Final Report. As Amended and Corrected through February 2008 (http://www.ifla.org/VII/s13/frbr/frbr_2008.pdf).