Investigation on a conceptual model over and above all Codes

Abstract

The IFLA Section on Cataloguing, together with other organisms (among which the Deutsche Bibliothek, the Library of Congress, OCLC), has promoted an initiative of a series of regional meetings, called IME ICC (IFLA Meetings of Experts on an International Cataloguing Code). These intend trying to arrive at drafting an international cataloguing code and, even before this, of establishing the internationally shared principles that should form it. Two of these meetings have already taken place, the first in Frankfurt on 28 and 29 July 2003 (IME ICC1) for the European countries and for all the Anglosaxon countries together (cf. http://www.ddb.de/news/ifla_conf_index.htm), the second in Buenos Aires on 17 and 18 August 2004 (IME ICC2) for the countries of Latin America and those of the Caribbean (cf.http://www.loc.gov/imeicc2). Both were presented as preconferences of the IFLA annual conference. The final meeting is scheduled for Durban in South Africa in 2007. The meetings are articulated around five themes: names of person, names of body, serials, multipart structures, uniform titles and IGM. The reflections show the effects of the analysis contained in the FRBR (Functional requirements for bibliographic records) model, published in 1998, that represents the conception that IFLA currently has of the “cataloguing universe”. The essay by Patrick Le Boeuf (librarian of the Bibliothèque national de France and person in charge of the IFLA FRBR Review Group) is a new presentation of the report presented in Frankfurt on 28 July 2003 and in Buenos Aires on 17 August 2004. It reflects the analysis with which FRBR approaches the universe of cataloguing initiated at the IME ICC1 of Frankfurt and continued at the IME ICC2 of Buenos Aires.