BIBFRAMEa

BIBFRAMEa is not an officially recognized bibliographic standard; it is not widely used in library catalogs. In most cases, references to BIBFRAMEa are either typographical errors for BIBFRAME or informal uses of the term within a project-specific context.

BIBFRAME, or the Bibliographic Framework Initiative, is a model developed by the Library of Congress to replace MARC-based bibliographic descriptions with a Linked Data–friendly framework. It uses Resource Description Framework (RDF) to describe resources and their relationships, with a focus on making bibliographic data more interoperable and reusable on the web.

The BIBFRAME model centers on three core entities: bf:Work, bf:Instance, and bf:Item. A Work represents the intellectual or artistic content; an Instance is a concrete manifestation such as a specific edition or copy; an Item is a single physical exemplar. The model also uses agents, places, and topics to describe creators, publishers, and subjects, with relationships expressed as RDF triples in a graph. The data structure is designed to support linking and aggregation of related resources across libraries and platforms.

Libraries have engaged in MARC-to-BIBFRAME mappings and experiments with cataloging tools to publish BIBFRAME data as Linked Data. The approach aims to improve discovery, enable more granular linking of related resources, and support data sharing across libraries and platforms. Adoption varies, and some institutions report challenges related to tooling, training, and consistency in modeling decisions.

If you encounter BIBFRAMEa, it is likely a nonstandard usage, a project nickname, or a typographical variant rather than an official specification.

See also: MARC, Linked Data, RDF, Library of Congress, Bibliographic control.