Thomas Hickey
Chief Scientist
OCLC Research
Diane Vizine-Goetz
Consulting Research Scientist
OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc.
OCLC is investigating how best to implement IFLA’s Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR). We have now clustered at the ‘work’ level the entire 48 million record WorldCat database and a number of subsets, including the records representing works of fiction. “Fiction Finder” is a prototype system to explore ways of searching and browsing bibliographic records representing fiction. FRBR is an integral part of the system, helping to organize lists into more comprehensible displays than typical retrieval systems. Our experience has led us to some suggestions as to how FRBR should be evaluated and implemented in large databases.