Derivative bibliographic relationships: The work relationship in a global bibliographic database

Abstract

To contribute to the development of a sophisticated control of bibliographic works research must build on the growing understanding of the nature of the work and the constitution of bibliographic families. The present study was designed to address the following in the context of a global bibliographic database: the OCLC Online Computer Library Center's WorldCat: the proportion of works that are members of bibliographic families; the size of each family; bibliographic characteristics that can be associated with the existence or extent of derivative bibliographic relationships; the frequency with which each type of relationship appears; and the complexity of bibliographic families. A sample of bibliographic families was constructed. Results indicate that a core of works of similar character constitute the bibliographic population of American academic and research libraries (OCLC members). It seems that the canon of derivative works is greater in the academic sphere than in the bibliographic universe represented by OCLC at large. The size of a bibliographic family seems to be related to its popularity or its canonicity. Discipline, form, and genre all fail to demonstrate any influence on derivation of works. Further study of specific segments of the bibliographic universe, for instance the literature of particular disciplines, is clearly called for. The purpose of this research is to contribute to the development of a sophisticated control of bibliographic works and families. In particular, this research is designed to build on our growing understanding of the nature of the work and the constitution of bibliographic families.

Studying Conceptual Models for Publishing Library Data to the Semantic Web

“…The cases are of varying complexity, from single-volume monographs to aggregates, involving also the representation of content relationships (derivation, adaptation, equivalence, whole-part) and large bibliographic families. The term bibliographic family, as defined in [3], refers to a group of related bibliographic works that somehow derive from a common progenitor. To cover all these cases, selected records from library catalogs have been used.…”

Analysis of Work-to-Work Bibliographic Relationships through FRBR: A Canadian Perspective

“…Of the seven classes, derivative is particularly broad ranging. This led Smiraglia 14 , 15 to focus only on the derivative relationships and to propose a subdivision into seven subclasses as an extension to the taxonomy. He proposed a taxonomy of derivative relationships: simultaneous derivations, successive derivations, translations, amplifications, extractions, adaptations, and performances.…”

Preserving Bibliographic Relationships in Mappings from FRBR to BIBFRAME 2.0

“…Content relationships may explicitly or implicitly exist between bibliographic entities generating bibliographic families. The term bibliographic family has been coined by Professor Smiraglia to describe 'a set of related bibliographic works that are somehow derived from a common progenitor' [1]. Works or Expressions within the same bibliographic family may share the same intellectual content and be related to the progenitor through different types of relationships.…”

“…A key requirement for successful mappings between different conceptual models is to preserve content relationships and hence to approach the model's compatibility degree to the bibliographic families, after the mapping and the data transformation [5][6][7][8]. Preservation of bibliographic families, based on the Smiraglia definition [1,4], means the preservation of information that two or more Works originate from a common progenitor. This study investigates whether and how content relationships could be preserved when transforming data from FRBR to BIBFRAME 2.0 (hereafter referred as BIBFRAME), as well as their bibliographic families.…”

“…He also coined the term bibliographic family to express Works that somehow derive from a common original Work, also known as the progenitor. Smiraglia also found that older and/or popular Works tend to have large and complex families [1,14]. Such families formulate information networks consisting of nodes, which are instances of bibliographic entities, and arcs, that interconnect the instances and denote their relationships.…”