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FRBRizing Works on Al- Quran

Yushiana Mansor1, Sharifah Nur Amirah Sarif Abdullah

1, Normaziah Abdul Aziz

2, Siti

Raihanah Mohd Shah2 and Nurul Farahana Aersid

2

1Department of Library and Information Science, International Islamic University Malaysia,

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; 2Department of Computer Science, International Islamic University Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur,

Malaysia

Email: [email protected];[email protected];[email protected];

[email protected];[email protected]

Abstract: The FRBR model promises better arrangement, collocation, and navigation in bibliographic

databases. As such, a FRBRized library online catalog (OPAC) could improve the performance of

OPAC as a retrieval tool. This paper reports the finding of a FRBR research for works on al-Quran.

The first objective was to assess the feasibility of applying object-oriented FRBR model to MARC-

based bibliographic records on al-Quran. In doing so, the following have been conducted: selecting

records, identifying entities, establishing relationship, normalizing results, and defining work types

according to the FRBR model. Several issues have been found useful to be further explored which

includes multi-script, complex work, and missing fields. The second objective was to experiment on

FRBRzing the work-set on al-Quran using the LOC FRBR Display Tool. This paper will elaborate on

the process of FRBRizing using this open-source tool. Several problems encountered in the

experiment will be discussed and future enhancements are proposed.

Keywords: Online Catalogs, FRBR model, MARC records, FRBR Display Tool, Al-Quran

Introduction

The FRBR model was introduced to allow for better arrangement, collocation, and navigation in

bibliographic databases. This is being achieved by adapting FRBR to simplify record retrieval and

aggregate result sets into manageable clusters. Many researches has been done to test the feasibility of

implementing FRBR in a large bibliographic catalogue, and exploring how FRBR can assist in the

integration of the traditional catalog with the web environment. Previous research in FRBR has

looked at several, distinct datasets such as literature, fiction, Bible, and special formats. No research

has been done to understand the attributes of works on al-Quran from the perspective of object-

oriented model. FRBRized catalogs on al-Quran would allow users to explore library holdings in

sensible groupings, which cluster similar materials.

Using the entity-relationship data model, FRBR defines data relationship in bibliographic

records in order to fulfil four important user tasks, i.e. to find, identify, select, and obtain access to

information. FRBR is now the international model for bibliographic records design being

conceptualized with flowcharts using three aspects: entities, attributes, and relationships. The FRBR

model gets its popularity in most of recent library projects in the world due to its potential in making

the relationship between entities in the first group which is known as work, expression, manifestation,

and items. It also has the potential to eliminate the duplication of similar records and merge different

titles and editions of the same work under one record, thus it will maximize user satisfaction and

improve the searching result. Widespread adoption of FRBR model is projected as major library

vendors are already experimenting on FRBRzing their large datasets of bibliographic databases. These



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mailto:[email protected];[email protected]

initiatives have contributed in identifying factors contributing to the effective modelling of FRBR to

existing and future bibliographic databases.

Various major studies have been carried out based on the concept of FRBR relationship

between entities. Eden (2006) shared the implementation on FRBR in some bibliographic databases in

Australia. The AustLit (www.austlit.edu.au) was custom-built using Topic maps for more than

350,000 Australian literatures through bibliographic citations and full text. Music Australia is

prototype experimented on the metadata and FRBR model in providing access to works on Australian

music.

Cho (2006) proposed a work-set algorithm that automatically converts a bibliographic

database into a FRBR structure. The study provided a methodological theory for extracting work-sets

for bibliographic databases in Korea through their union catalog, which was structured based on

KORMARC standard. In that context, the application of the xISBN Web service technology, which

enables the FRBRized outcomes to be easily shared, would be a realistic alternative for the FRBR

browsing of libraries in Korea.

A study conducted by Chen and Chen (2004) on FRBR Implementation on a Thesis

Collection in National Central Library of Taiwan: A Prototype Case Study showed that the FRBR

model in their study is better than traditional cataloguing and indexing methods. The study

implements a model to organize masters and doctoral theses available in the National Central Library

of Taiwan (NCL) and attempts to assess its feasibility. They employ the FRBR model to analyze

entities and relationships for those theses, design an algorithm, and set up a system for trial runs. The

finding provides the user with better and faster services in accessing the theses collection in the

National Central Library of Taiwan.

Bennet, Lavoie, & O‟Neill (2003) explored the concept of a work in the WorldCat using the

hierarchy of bibliographic entities as defined in FRBR. The study found that FRBR could be

beneficial when applied to concentrated, relatively small number of complex works. Interestingly, in

the process of identifying work clusters, they found that bibliographic records pertaining to „Bible‟

posed them unique challenges in terms of identifying their boundaries, which according to them,

warranted a separate study.

Naun (2006), reported a study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Online

Research Resources system has proved amenable to FRBR. The FRBR model was useful in

identifying user tasks, appropriate data structures, and feasibility of mapping data from existing

resources.

The study

As most libraries in the world are holding MARC-based bibliographic records, mapping to

the FRBR model will pose several challenges which this study seeks to reveal. Findings of this study

will contribute in enhancing the retrieval of works on al-Quran in online catalogs. Better

understanding of the attributes of works on al-Quran through the FRBR model will assist in better

design of online catalogs that support FRBR user-tasks, i.e. finding, identifying, selecting, and

obtaining works on al-Quran.

The objectives of this research are:

(1) To examine the issues associated with the conversion of a set of MARC-based bibliographic

records for works on al-Quran to conform to FRBR model

(2) To FRBRize works on al-Quran using the FRBR Display Tool (Library of Congress)



Mapping MARC to FRBR

For objective no.1 above, a descriptive analysis was performed to generate an understanding of the

detail characteristics of all the elements in MARC records on al-Quran that will be further converted

into FRBR model. The analysis had looked into the elements in the MARC records that could be the

candidate fields to be mapped to the FRBR model, the relationship between bibliographic records and

bibliographic objects in the dataset, and the sufficiency of MARC records to be converted into FRBR.

A sample of 127 MARC-based bibliographic records was selected from the International Islamic

University (IIUM) OPAC on al-Quran. All the samples were identified according to the work clusters

and each record of the sample were examined through FRBR major entities. Then, the sample of

elements sets in the chosen MARC bibliographic records on Quran were identified in order to

determine the different expressions and manifestations according to FRBR model. In this phase,

issues and challenges of mapping MARC based bibliographic records on al-Quran were identified.

Moreover, three classes of work type, i.e. Elemental work, Simple work and Complex work were

assigned to each of the records.

Findings

a) Language of works

The language for every MARC records of Quran was examined in this study. Language is important

to determine the types of expression represents in the FRBR model. The element represents language

according to MARC tag is 008. Table 1 presents the distribution of language in the MARC records on

Quran.

Table 1:

Distribution of MARC Records by Language

Language Frequency Percent (%)

Arabic 5 3.9

English 80 63.0

French 10 7.9

German 19 15.0

Latin 4 3.1

Russian 3 2.4

Turkish 3 2.4

Polish 1 0.8

Spanish 1 0.8

Tagalog 1 0.8

Total 127 100

Table 2 illustrates the selected examples of language used in the existing MARC records on Quran.

The 008 identifier represents fixed-length fields with various kinds of coded information, and there

are also specific data elements positionally defined. Then, the character position (00) provides coded

information about the record as a language identifier of the item being catalogued. These coded data

elements were potentially useful for retrieval and data management purposes.



Table 2

Examples of MARC Records by Language

ID Language Language Identification Examples

032 Arabic 008 050804s1996 ua g 000 ara d مختصر دستور األخالق فى القرآن

004 French 008 960611s1990 fr b a001 0 fre

d

Le Coran : essai de traduction de

l'arabe annote et suivi d'une etude

exegetique

024 German 008 070925s1998 gw a001 0 ger

u

Die Bedeutung de Qur'ans

118 Latin 008 800904t1893 gw 000 0 lat c Chrestomathia Qorani Arabica

b) Form of work

Table 3 summarizes the form of work distribution of the127 MARC records on Quran. Form of work

in the MARC records was important in confirming the manifestation entities in the FRBR model.

Table 3

Form of Work

Form of work Frequency Percent (%)

Microform 1 0.8

Computer Software 1 0.8

Manuscript 1 0.8

Book 124 97.6

Total 127 100

Table 4 exemplifies some of the form of work in the existing MARC records on Quran. This medium

of works was detected in the tag 245, subfield (h), and tag 630, subfield (x).

Table 4

Examples of Form of Work

ID Form of Work Examples

027 Microform 245 14 $aThe Koran. Daghestan, XIV-XVI

centuries $h [microform]

042 Computer File 245 03 $aal-Qur'an al-Karim $h [computer file] = The Holy Quran

= Al-Quran yang suci = Kur'an-i Kerim programi = Le Saint Coran

= Der Heilige Koran

089 Manuscript 630 0 $aKoran $xManuscripts $xCatalogs

c) Types of work

Work type is crucial in explaining multiple expressions and multiple manifestations. The result

illustrated that most of the work on Quran (81.9%) was elemental; 15.7% (20) was simple work; and

remaining 2.4% (3) was complex work. Elemental work is a work with a single expression and a



single manifestation. Complex work means a work with a single expression but multiple

manifestations, and Complex work describes a work with multiple expressions and multiple

manifestations. Examples of the work types are as below (Table 5).

Table 5

Examples of Types of Work

ID Types of Work Example

006 Elemental [W] William Montgomery Watt : Companion to t

the Qur‟an: based on the Arberry translation

[E1] The original English text

[M1] Original ed. (English), 2008 (printed text)

089 Simple [W] Arthur John Arberry: The Koran illuminated : a handlist of

the Korans in the Chester Beatty Library

[E1] the original English text

[M1] original ed. (English), 1967 [printed

manuscript]

[M2] original ed. (English), 1990 [printed text]

013 Complex [W] Toshihiko Izutsu: God and man in the Koran:

semantics of the Koranic weltanschauung

[E1] the original English text

[M1] original ed. (English), 1984 [printed text]

[M2] original ed. (English, 1984 [TIFF file]

[E2] revised ed. (English

[M3] revised ed. (English), 1989 [printed text]

[E3] 3rd ed. (English)

Overall, 98% (124) of the records were sufficient and have enough data to be FRBRized.

FRBRizing MARC

For objective no 2, the FRBR Display Tool consists of a shell script or a Windows batch file and

supporting file. Marc2frbr.sh is a Windows batch file that contain shell script (Figure 1). The FRBR

display tool uses MARC4J which is an open source java to convert MARC records stored in ISO2709

binary format to MARCXML. Then, the MARC data is transformed through a sequence of four XSLT

transformations, which are based in part on the MARCXML toolkit. In the fourth transformation,

FRBRized MODS XML is styled into HTML. Finally, in (Figure 2), two files will be generated which

contains HTML file and the XML file (Schneider, 2008).

This final transformation, which serializes to an html display format, is called inside the

FRBRize.xsl stylesheet, as an xsl:processing-instruction. Throughout the process, the MARCXML

tility transformations http: //www.loc.gov/marcxml/xslt/ MARC21slimUtils.xsl are used via an

xsl:import.



Figure 1

marc2frbr.sh - shell script

Findings

In this experiment, 100 MARC records each from the IIUM library and Library of Congress (LOC)

were extracted. The sample includes various works in various formats such text, audio and images.

Figure 2

FRBRization process



a) Fields used for FRBRization

Figure 3 below shows that in this particular work level, field 100 is used for the author and field 240

for the work. In the expression level, LDR/06 is being used for the type of record and 008/35-37 for

the language code. While in manifestation level, fields 245,250,260, and 300 are used (Schneider,

2008).

Figure 3

Fields used in FRBR Display Tool

b) Display Sort Order

Sorting is done using author‟s name and results are displayed in ascending order (Figure 4).

Figure 4

Result display in sorted order

c) Displaying works in different editions



Figure 5 below is an example of a work with different editions. Records are displayed under the same

group and the various editions are identified.

Figure 5

Display result in several editions

d) Displaying works in different languages

Figure 6 gives an example of a work, in which two are in Arabic and one in Urdu language. Since

those records are of the same work, the records are arranged first under the work and then further

divided based on the language of the work.

Figure 6



Display result with different Language

e) Problems in FRBRizing

a. Result display and sensitivity to data errors

The display result of works, expressions and manifestations is displayed in a fairly flat

structure. It is better if the logic within the algorithm can support more interactive, linked and layered

display interface. The tool is very sensitive to data errors within the LOC records particularly in the

transformation from MARC to XML. It would be much better if the records that failed to be

FRBRized due to data error to be written to an error file so that the tool can still continue processing

the rest of the records. Checking for error record had to be done manually (Figure 7).

Figure 7

Identification of error records

b. UTF-8 support

We experimented on whether the FRBR Display Tool can support the UTF-8 or not. Figure 8

shows the result of saving one MARC record UTF-8 Format.



Figure 8

Different display of character in title between MARC record and FRBRized record

From the figure above, we can see that MARC record contains Latin Character, Latin

Extended-A and Arabic character. FRBRizing the record using command prompt resulted in

“character not found in table 45”, which means some characters in the MARC record is

unrecognizable. After FRBRization, the title “Tarakib al-ta‟fil al-Qura‟n al-karim” in MARC record,

is displayed as “TaraÌ„kiÌ„b al-taÊ»liÌ„l fiÌ„ al-QurÊơaÌ„n al-kariÌ„m”.

This shows that the FRBR Display Tool will represent the non-roman character such as

Arabic, Chinese and etc. in symbols. It cannot process and display non-roman character in the original

form. It is more preferable if the FRBR Display Tool can support the non-roman character and display

it in the display result.

Conclusion

This study on mapping and converting MARC bibliographic records on works on al-Quran

found that most of the MARC based bibliographic record on Al- Quran was sufficient to represent the

FRBR model. In general, experimenting on the use of the FRBR Display Tool exhibited impressive

results. However, further refinements need to be done to address issues pertaining to records in Arabic

script, records representing complex work and records with missing data such as subject headings.

This indicates the importance of maintaining the quality of bibliographic records and developing a

more robust FRBR tool.



References

Bennett, R. et al. (2003). The concept of a work in WorldCat: an application of FRBR. Library

Collections, Acquisitions, & Technical Services, 27. Retrieved from

http://www.sciiencedirect.com.

Chen, Y. N. & Chen, S. J. (2004). A Metadata Practice of the IFLA FRBR Model: A case

study for the National Museum in Taipei. Journal of Documentation, 60(2). Retrieved

from http://proquest.umi.com.

Cho, J. (2006). A study on the application method of the Functional Requirements for

Bibliographic Records (FRBR) to the Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC) in Korean

libraries. Library Collections, Acquisitions, & Technical Services, 30, 202- 213.

Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com.

Eden, B. (2006). FRBR Implementations. Library Technology Reports, 42(6). Retrieved from

http://proquest.umi.com.

Naun, C.C. (2006). Notes on Operations: FRBR Principles Applied to a Local Online Journal

Finding Aid. LRTS, 51(2). Retrieved from http://web.ebscohost.com.

Schneider, J. (2008). FRBRzing MARC Records with the FRBR display tool. Retrieved from

http://jodischneider.com/pubs/2008may_frbr.html.



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Hak Cipta Terpelihara © 2011 IIUM/UiTM/USIMmyrepositori.pnm.gov.my/bitstream/123456789/3099/1/44... · 013 Complex [W] Toshihiko Izutsu: God and man in the Koran: semantics of the