Definitions of bf:Authority subclasses, for example bf:Person, have been corrected to better reflect their real meanings.

For example, the updated definition of bf:Person:

bf:Person: Individual or identity established by an individual (either alone or in collaboration with one or more other individuals)

Other definitions have also been similarly updated: bf:Family, bf:Organization, bf:Jurisdiction, bf:Meeting, bf:Topic, bf:Temporal, and bf:Place.

These class definitions have been changed because (as was pointed out in discussion on the BIBFRAME listserv) they did not reflect the information to which they referred. The tradition has been to think of the function of the authority record (in MARC) as the home of the “authorized string” that represents the entity (e.g., a person) in bibliographic data in support of collocation and finding of data.  However, the authority record has often contained additional information about the entity (for example, a MADS RDF authority record might include affiliation or field of activity), and in the future will contain more since RDA recommends recording information for persons such as occupation, place of birth, gender, etc.  In the future, records will probably contain more links to additional information about the entity, in addition to the current links to Wikipedia.  The changed definitions reflect this reality.  A BIBFRAME description of a person will still contain information about constructed authorized strings for use in appropriate applications.

Last Updated: October 15, 2014