Entities, attributes and bibliographic relationships: re-reading Barbara B. Tillett’s PhD dissertation 30 years later

Abstract

This essay intends to illustrate Barbara Tillett’s PhD dissertation Bibliographic relationships: toward a conceptual structure of bibliographic information in cataloging (1987), the first exhaustive theoretical analysis on the bibliographic universe that focuses on bibliographic relationships. The pioneering work carried out by the author between 1981 and 1987 is divided in two parts: an analytical study and an empirical study. In the analytical study the author, through an examination of relevant Anglo-American cataloging codes, creates a taxonomy of bibliographic relationships in which seven categories are identified. For each identified category, Tillett outlines the history of the main linking devices used in catalogs. The empirical study was conducted by Tillett in order to evaluate the extent of bibliographic relationships as reflected through their frequency of occurrence in the machine-readable database (MARC) of the Library of Congress during the period between 1968 and July 1986. Bibliographic relationships played a central role in the development of the conceptual model FRBR, Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records, which, in turn, is at the base of ICP, International Cataloging Principles of 2009, and of RDA, Resource Description and Access, that devotes a large part of the text to entities, attributes and specially to bibliographic relationships. The theoretical results of Barbara Tillett’s doctoral dissertation build the fundamental basis for any scientific study on the entities, attributes, and relationships of bibliographic resources.