Bookrecords

Bookrecords are structured bibliographic records describing books and related works. They are maintained by libraries, publishers, booksellers, and digital repositories to support discovery, cataloging, and management of book assets.

A bookrecord typically includes fields such as title, author or contributors, edition, imprint (place, publisher, date), language, physical format, subject headings, notes, and identifiers like ISBN, ISSN, LCCN, and OCLC numbers. It may also link to digital copies or related works.

Standards and models underpin bookrecords. Libraries commonly use MARC 21 or BIBFRAME for encoding, while Dublin Core provides a general schema. The FRBR model guides relationships among work, expression, manifestation, and item, and authority control ensures consistent names.

Records are created by catalogers or harvested from publishers and databases. They are normalized, deduplicated, and linked to authority records. Data sources include publisher catalogs, library catalogs, bibliographic databases, and digitization projects.

Uses include search and discovery, acquisitions and cataloging, holdings management, bibliometrics, and linking to reviews and digital copies. Bookrecords form the backbone of library catalogs, bookseller listings, and digital libraries.

Challenges include variable metadata quality, edition disambiguation, multilingual records, and maintaining accurate links and rights information. Ongoing efforts aim to improve interoperability and automation in metadata creation and enrichment.