Thematic access

Tools for Libraries
Resources for PhD students
Standardization: templates and formats
Training
Electronics documentation
Publications
Reuse data
Library management systems
Events

Standardization: templates and formats

Standardization missions

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Bibliographic transition

Norms and standards

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Formats

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International identifiers

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The challenge of the bibliographicalAbes transition

Run jointly byAbes and BnF under the authority of the Comité Stratégique Bibliographique (CSB), the national Bibliographic Transition program is part of an international drive to model library metadata according to the IFLA LRM model.

Professional associations and training bodies are strongly involved in implementing this transformation of cataloguing practices. Operational tasks are distributed and coordinated within the framework of three national working groups in whichAbes and professionals from the ESR data production networks are involved:

find out more: follow the program's work on the Transition Bibliographique website

Supporting the adoption of the RDA cataloguing code - Resources: Description and access

The exposure and visibility of catalog data on the Web is a fundamental challenge for libraries. Published in 2010, the RDA - Resources: Description and Access cataloging code aims to provide an international response to this need, through a new approach to metadata.

While coming as close as possible to RDA, the decisions taken at national level are designed to preserve French catalographic analysis. These new rules are currently being published, and will continue to be published until 2024. They take the form of a cataloguing code, RDA-FR: Transposition française de RDA, which will gradually replace the old AFNOR cataloguing standards.

RDA is one of the first cataloguing codes to follow in the footsteps of the FRBR and FRAD conceptual models of documentary metadata, then the IFLA LRM, and the International Cataloguing Principles published in 2009. RDA prioritizes catalog user comfort and the most structured resource analysis possible.

Although developed as part of the updating of AACR2 (Anglo-American cataloging rules), its development was accompanied by extensive international consultation so that it could be implemented beyond the AACR user community. The internationalization of RDA has been amplified since 2018 with the publication of a new version of the international standard.

Supporting modeling work: from FRBR to IFLA LRM

Initiated in the early 1990s, work on modelling documentary metadata led to the implementation of FRBR, the model that formed the basis for the major revision of cataloguing codes from 2000 onwards. The FRAD and FRSAD models were then designed to model authority data.

A second version of FRBR, called FRBRoo(object oriented ), was developed in the context of a rapprochement with the CIDOC-CRM model defined for museum data.

IFLA LRM (Library Reference Model)

Status: conceptual model
1st edition: 2017
Current edition: 2017

Published last August 2017, the IFLA-LRM model succeeds the FRBR, FRAD and FRSAD models by simplifying and harmonising them.

IFLA LRM is a generic model designed as an ontology for the Semantic Web. IFLA LRM integrates the four basic FRBR entities (work, expression, manifestation, item) while adding new ones (res, agent, time lapse, nomen), enabling a hierarchy to be established between entities and providing solutions on points where the FRBR model was deficient.

IFLA LRM paves the way for true entity-based cataloging within document systems, marking an evolution in data production and presentation processes through library catalog interfaces.

Another important benefit of this extensive modeling work is that it facilitates the insertion of documentary metadata into the Web of Data.

  • Visit the Bibliographic Transition website
  • Consult the IFLA website  
  • English version. Consolidation Editorial Group of the IFLA FRBR Review Group. IFLA Library Reference Model: A Conceptual Model for Bibliographic Information. 2017.

Implementation of the International Cataloguing Principles (ICP)

Status: international standard
1st edition: 2009
Current edition: 2016

Developed in 2009 under the auspices of IFLA following expert meetings and an international consultation lasting more than five years, the International Cataloguing Principles replace the Paris Principles published in 1961. They take into account the modelling work that led to the publication of FRBR and FRAD, with which they form a corpus on which new bibliographic metadata standards and cataloguing codes are based.

  • English version. IFLA Cataloguing Section and IFLA Meetings of Experts on an International Cataloguing Code. Statement of International Cataloguing Principles. 2016
  • French-language version. IFLA Cataloguing Section and IFLA Expert Meetings for an International Cataloguing Code. International Cataloguing Principles ; trans. by Françoise Bourdon, Françoise Leresche, Catherine Marandas. 2009.

Note: the 2016 version is not yet translated into French.