**2. History and overview of BIBFRAME**

Officially established in 2011 by the Library of Congress, the Bibliographic Framework Initiative, or BIBFRAME, is a high-level model designed to facilitate the bibliographic description of information resources as well as the exchange of bibliographic data in the networked environment. In 2012 the Library of Congress contracted Zepheria, a consulting firm that specializes in the deployment of semantic

**3**

goals [4]:

**2.1 The BIBFRAME model**

resource" [5]

[5, 6]. These are defined below:

*BIBFRAME Linked Data: A Conceptual Study on the Prevailing Content Standards and Data…*

web technologies, to assist with the development of the model. In addition to its work with the Library of Congress, Zepheria has also played, in partnership with Google, Yahoo, and Bing, a key role in the development of Schema.org, a common set of web developer metadata schemas designed to describe websites in support of the indexing efforts of the Internet's major search engines. Over its brief history, BIBFRAME has produced and published a vocabulary for the model, a number of discussion papers related to the vocabulary or other aspects of BIBFRAME imple-

In its essence, BIBFRAME is an entity-relation model similar to the model put forth in the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Description. As such, it consists of entities and attributes designed for the description of resources typically managed by cultural heritage institutions. As a result of this entity-relation model, BIBFRAME emphasizes its focus on capturing data elements relevant to bibliographic description, such as title, author, publisher, etc., instead of the creation of complete bibliographic records, which has historically been the focus of the library community. In this way, BIBFRAME establishes a framework for bibliographic description that clearly separates information related to the intellectual contents of

Within this entity-relation model, BIBFRAME is further modeled within RDF/ XML in order to bring the model in-line with Semantic Web principles. The use of RDF/XML allows users of the model to identify entities and to describe the relationships between them more clearly and completely. Moreover, it permits these relationships be processed more easily by machines, making library data more conducive to the Web environment. In other words, it allows library data to be found more easily by Internet search engines and, by extension, users. At the heart of this development is the use of Universal Resource Identifiers, or URIs, to name entities and data values, instead of text strings. Thus, the entire BIBFRAME vocabulary of

In summary, BIBFRAME utilizes Web architecture for the description, maintenance, and exchange of bibliographic data in order to accomplish three primary

The newest BIBFRAME model, version 2.0, consists of three core class entities

1.Differentiate clearly between conceptual content and its physical

3.Leverage and expose relationships between and among entities.

• Work: "a resource reflecting a conceptual essence of the cataloged

• Item: "an actual copy (physical or electronic) of an instance" [5].

As these entities and their definitions make clear, BIBFRAME, like FRBR, separates the intellectual content of a resource (creative work) from its physical

2.Focus on unambiguously identifying information entities.

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.91849*

mentation, and tools for data conversion.

resources from their physical properties.

entities and properties has been rendered in URI form.

manifestation(s) (e.g., works and instances).

• Instance: "a material embodiment of a work" [5]

## *BIBFRAME Linked Data: A Conceptual Study on the Prevailing Content Standards and Data… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.91849*

web technologies, to assist with the development of the model. In addition to its work with the Library of Congress, Zepheria has also played, in partnership with Google, Yahoo, and Bing, a key role in the development of Schema.org, a common set of web developer metadata schemas designed to describe websites in support of the indexing efforts of the Internet's major search engines. Over its brief history, BIBFRAME has produced and published a vocabulary for the model, a number of discussion papers related to the vocabulary or other aspects of BIBFRAME implementation, and tools for data conversion.

In its essence, BIBFRAME is an entity-relation model similar to the model put forth in the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Description. As such, it consists of entities and attributes designed for the description of resources typically managed by cultural heritage institutions. As a result of this entity-relation model, BIBFRAME emphasizes its focus on capturing data elements relevant to bibliographic description, such as title, author, publisher, etc., instead of the creation of complete bibliographic records, which has historically been the focus of the library community. In this way, BIBFRAME establishes a framework for bibliographic description that clearly separates information related to the intellectual contents of resources from their physical properties.

Within this entity-relation model, BIBFRAME is further modeled within RDF/ XML in order to bring the model in-line with Semantic Web principles. The use of RDF/XML allows users of the model to identify entities and to describe the relationships between them more clearly and completely. Moreover, it permits these relationships be processed more easily by machines, making library data more conducive to the Web environment. In other words, it allows library data to be found more easily by Internet search engines and, by extension, users. At the heart of this development is the use of Universal Resource Identifiers, or URIs, to name entities and data values, instead of text strings. Thus, the entire BIBFRAME vocabulary of entities and properties has been rendered in URI form.

In summary, BIBFRAME utilizes Web architecture for the description, maintenance, and exchange of bibliographic data in order to accomplish three primary goals [4]:

