The Chinese version of the IFLA LRM (IFLA Library Reference Model: a Conceptual Model for Bibliographic Information) was published on the IFLA website on December 5, 2020. It was translated by catalogers of the National Library of China in the past two years.
Since the publication of FRBR in 1998, there had been little attention from the Chinese library community until September 2002, when Barbara Tillett visited Beijing and introduced it to colleagues in China. During the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, there were quite a lot of articles on FRBR published in Chinese journals of library science, and there were also some experimental projects for the application of FRBR to Chinese library catalogs. The Chinese version of FRBR (jointly by librarians from Shanghai Jiao Tong University Library, the Shanghai Library, Peking University Library and the National Library of China) was finally released on the IFLA website in 2008.
With the adaptation of ISBD to FRBR, the conceptual model family has been paid more attention by Chinese library catalogers and scholars. FRAD (Functional Requirements for Authority Data) was translated into Chinese by Lu WANG and other colleagues from the National Library of China (NLC), and was published in January 2010. Then, FRSAD (Functional Requirements for Subject Authority Data) was translated by Sha LIU from the Wuhan University, and was published in December 2013.
However, FRBRoo and LRM had received little attention from China before 2016, when Pat Riva gave a lecture with the title “IFLA Library Reference Model: Overview” in NLC, Beijing, China, October 21. About 120 librarians from NLC and other libraries in Beijing attended the lecture, and got latest information about the IFLA LRM. Then, more Chinese librarians began to keep up with the future development of FRBR/LRM.
Since the RDA Toolkit Restructure and Redesign (3R) Project has implemented the IFLA LRM, we think it important to have a Chinese version. Thus, six catalogers from NLC jointly completed the translation, and finalized it in May 2020. Much time was spent for the deliberation of the text and the understanding of the new terms, and the translation is also a process of comparison and learning of related standards, formats and rules.
We hope the Chinese version of the IFLA LRM will promote the understanding of international cataloging related activities in the Chinese library community.
