Via Coyle’s InFormation – “I was recently speaking at a library conference in OSLO where I went through my criticisms of our cataloging models, and how they are not suited to the problems we need to solve today. I had my usual strong criticisms of FRBR and the IFLA LRM. However, when I finished speaking I was asked why I am so critical of those models, which means that I did not explain myself well. I am going to try again here, as clearly and succinctly as I can. Conflation of Conceptual Models with Data Models – FRBR’s main impact was that it provided a mental model of the bibliographic universe that reflects a conceptual view of the elements of descriptive cataloging. You will find nothing in FRBR that could not be found in standard library cataloging of the 1990’s, which is when the FRBR model was developed. What FRBR adds to our understanding of bibliographic information is that it gives names and definitions to key concepts that had been implied but not fully articulated in library catalog data. If it had stopped there we would have had an interesting mental model that allows us to speak more precisely about catalogs and cataloging…”