BIBFRAME without BIBFRAME: The infrastructure of next-generation cataloging workflows

Abstract

At the outset of the BIBFRAME project the Library of Congress published a document outlining the workflows that it envisioned would be enabled by using RDF-based linked bibliographic metadata over MARC records. This paper analyzes the workflows described by the Library of Congress and infers the kind of software infrastructure that would be required to support those workflows. The result is that few BIBFRAME workflows actually require BIBFRAME as a metadata standard and are equally possible using MARC. MARC is already, in any meaningful sense, linked data; it is just not RDF. The questions must then be asked: what new possibilities does BIBFRAME enable and do they justify the time and effort required to achieve them?.