FRBR, RDA and Law Libraries

Abstract

Over the past few years the cataloguing community has seen radical changes in cataloguing standards, changes which appear to have been largely ignored by legal information professionals. This is a mistake according to Helen Doyle; the new cataloguing model can have enormous implications for the legal community, particularly in the spheres of information and knowledge management, and the profession is missing a huge opportunity by ignoring it. A new cataloguing standard (RDA) has been developed based on an alternative theoretical approach, known as “Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records” (FRBR). FRBR seeks to change the way we approach the bibliographic universe: from stand-alone, individual repositories of information to networks of linked data built on a structured hierarchy. Commercial law firms are constantly trying to make connections between their traditional resources, online repositories, internal know-how, etc, but struggle to achieve complete synchronicity. FRBR provides a solution to this knowledge management problem: all resources (including people, events and subjects) become searchable, and because everything is linked, users can access information by navigating to it, establishing their own pathway through the data. Moreover, the major legal databases are already utilising linked data in this way – it is time for law firms to catch up.