James Weinheimer wrote: > Designers of relational databases want > to make their databases as efficient as they can, and one way to do that > is by eliminating as much duplication as possible. This is what FRBR > proposes.
No, the FRBR model uses the language of entity-relationship models. But that model is being used to illustrate the relationships of the elements. It's a language for understanding the data. But the model isn't talking at all about the structures of data storage. Not one bit. That is not what it's concerned with! FRBR doesn't care if you keep the subject information (name of the subject, etc.) in a single record, not duplicated anywhere else, or copied in full into the records for every work, expression, and manifestation it's related to. That is irrelevant to what FRBR is talking about. FRBR isn't about database efficiency; it's about knowing what the pieces of data are, what they mean, and how they relate. Kevin M. Randall Principal Serials Cataloger Northwestern University Library k...@northwestern.edu (847) 491-2939 Proudly wearing the sensible shoes since 1978!
