Categorization, classification, oh my...

It seems I'm a bit old school. When discussing overly pedantic (but occassionally necessary) guidelines I'll mention AACR2. It's crucial for libraries but a bit overkill for most business users.

It seems that AACR is winding down in favour of Resource Description and Access (RDA). Like any good standard, RDA is not without its critics and opponents. What's interesting, however, is why RDA is necessary at all. Why did AACR fall short?

A key enabler for RDA is Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR). Specifically, FRBR articlates that an Item is an _exemplar of_ a Manifestation, is an _embodiment of_ an Expression, is a _realization of_ a Work.

Hmmm... interesting and all but probably not that useful for what I want to do.

The IFLA Statement of International Cataloguing Principles gives us some additional insight (http://www.ifla.org/files/assets/cataloguing/icp/icp_2009-en.pdf). Specifically, it notes that "bibliographic and authority data" can include the following entities:

• Work
• Expression
• Manifestation
• Item
• Person
• Family
• Corporate Body
• Concept
• Object
• Event
• Place