1. IFLA in RDF (+ RDA)
Gordon Dunsire
Chair, IFLA Namespaces Technical
Group; Chair-Elect, JSC/RDA

2. International Federation of Library Associations and
Institutions
• Maintaining bibliographic standards for over 40
years
– International Standard Bibliographic Description
(ISBD)
• Bibliographic description content standard
– UNIMARC (ISO 2709)
• Record format (Bibliographic, Authorities)
– Functional Requirements family
• FRBR, FRAD, FRSAD
• Conceptual models based on user tasks
– Multilingual Dictionary of Cataloguing (MulDiCat)
• 26 languages for multilingual cataloguing environment

3. International Federation of Library Associations and
Institutions
• Universal Bibliographic Control (UBC)
– Used world-wide
• RDF representations developed since 2009
• Open Metadata Registry used for RDF element
sets and value vocabularies

4. Current status of vocabularies
Standard Element sets Value vocabs Status Maps
FRBRer  Complete RDA*
FRBRoo  Complete CIDOC CRM
FRAD  Complete
FRSAD  Complete
FR consolidated  Ongoing FR family*
ISBD   (0-10) Complete UNIMARC*,
RDA*
UNIMARC   (10-100) Just started ISBD*
MulDiCat  (0-10) Ongoing IFLA standards*
RDA   (10-100) Ongoing FRBR*, ISBD*,
MARC 21
[MARC 21]   (10-100) Ongoing *****

5. Issues
• Maps based on “alignments”
– Often kinda-sameAs
– Mostly out-of-date
• Synchronization between “the Standard” and the
RDF representation
– Contextual documentation vs encapsulated semantics
– Expense?
• Protocols between different maintenance
organizations difficult to develop