This article reports on a Delphi study conducted to determine key issues and challenges facing Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) research and practice. The Delphi panel consisted of thirty-three experts in the field who participated in a three-round issue-raising and consensus-building process via a Web-based survey instrument designed for this study. The panel members were asked to raise critical issues in each of five major areas based on themes in existing literature: (1) the FRBR model, (2) FRBR and related standards, (3) FRBR application, (4) FRBR system development, and (5) FRBR research. These issues were categorized and then rated for importance in the follow-up rounds. The results of this study provide a list of the most critical issues, based on importance ratings and group consensus, for future FRBR research and practice in each FRBR area.

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are the recipients of an IMLS Leadership grant titled "Research and Development of FRBR-Based Systems to Effectively Support User Tasks and Facilitate Information Seeking."M any library catalogs and other information retrieval systems today do not support all the functions of the catalog as stated over a century ago by Cutter [1] and, within the last decade, by Lubetzky [2]. Past studies cite the failure to collocate all versions of the same work and the decision to ignore bibliographic relationships between different works and among expressions and manifestations of the same work as the reason for this lack of functionality [3].In an effort to ease users' difficulties in searching catalogs, library communities have begun to incorporate the ideas within IFLA's Final Report on Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) [4]. The foundation of FRBR is the distinction of four bibliographic entities (Group 1): work, expression, manifestation and item (IFLA, 1998).FRBR is a conceptual, entity-relationship model; it is open to various interpretations and implementations. Thus, those currently implementing all or part of the FRBR model have taken different approaches with respect to aspects such as user interface and display, system features, FRBR model focus, collection and other technical system implementation details. A survey of current system development, implementation efforts and different applications of the FRBR model is needed in order to gain a better understanding of these activities, solve application issues and plan for more successful FRBR projects in the future. This paper provides a brief overview of the types of collections and settings to which FRBR has been applied and existing literature that has previously examined FRBR application to some of these types of collections and settings. In addition, a brief overview of current system development efforts and supporting tools for creating FRBR-based systems and data is provided. FRBR ApplicationFRBR can be applied to all kinds of settings and collections, both format-based and domain-specific. Noerr, Goossens, Matei, Otten, Peruginelli and Witt [5] list a number of benefits for both the end user of a library catalog and the library staff, including easier searching, focused results, clustering at the work level, understanding and using bibliographic references and better navigation for end users. Among the benefits for library staff, the authors list better placement of data in records, easier copy cataloging and sharing of records and adding new data such as rights management.The application of the FRBR model is expected to be more beneficial to certain types of resources than others. In general, collections thought to benefit the most are those consisting of works expressed in a variety of ways, such as those published in different editions by different publishers and in different mediums. This category includes fictional works, music collections, serial collections and other aggregate works. In other words, the model will be most advantag...

This study is part of a three-year ongoing IMLS-funded project on the research and development of FRBR-based retrieval systems to support user tasks and to facilitate effective information seeking. The major focus of this study is on user research and testing of current FRBR prototype systems. A sample of three such FRBR prototypes are evaluated and compared by 72 users from both public and academic library settings. This user study will help identify useful options for FRBR implementation and contribute toward the development of more effective FRBR systems in the future. The findings of this study will also reveal current FRBR implementation issues and possible solutions from users' perspectives.

Since the development of the online public access catalog (OPAC), there has been discussion about what constitutes a next-generation (NextGen) catalog. In the last few years, many usercentered features have been included in both vendor and open source NextGen catalogs. What is lacking, though, is a study of user perspectives on the usefulness of these features in searches.Examining these perspectives will provide insight important to future the development of NextGen catalogs. In this study, 98 library science students reviewed the features of the AcquaBrowser, Encore, VuFind, and Scriblio systems. Participants used a 10 point scale (1=low, 10=high) to rate the helpfulness and desirability of user-centered features such as the simple search box, advanced search options, results sorting options, enriched content, user contributed content, faceted navigation, relevance ranking, spell checking, word constellations, word clouds, recommendations for similar items, external links, and other Web 2.0 features. Overall ratings show the advanced search option to have been the most helpful and the recently added items feature to have been least helpful, while faceted navigation was the most desirable feature and the recently added items feature was the least desirable. For all features included in the study, except the advanced search option, the average desirability of the features was rated higher than the average helpfulness. Additionally, more detailed findings, including users' comments about NextGen catalog features, are reported. Introduction and BackgroundSince Hildreth (1995) Importance of StudyThese NextGen catalog features are becoming the desired features for a library catalog and often are presented as user-centered features. What we lack now are actual user perspectives regarding if and how these features are used when searching a library catalog for information and how useful end-users find these features in their searches. This study examines user perspectives on a number of NextGen features available in current innovative library catalogs. The findings of this study will help us better understand how useful and desirable users perceive each of these NextGen features to be and will provide insight that will help future developments of next generation catalogs and other information retrieval systems. MethodsThe participants of this study were 98 library and information science students who were completing an organization of information course, in which they were introduced to information retrieval systems and search features among other related topics. NextGen catalogs used by the participants of this study include systems using AcquaBrowser, Encore, VuFind, and Scriblio. A number of system-specific features were examined by each participant and, in addition, users were asked to comment on an overall list of cross-system features. Features examined in this study include the simple search box, advanced search options, results sorting options, enriched content (tables of contents, summaries, cover art, reviews...