The three basic elements of the FRBR conceptual model of the bibliographic universe are:

Entities, Attributes, and Relationships.

Entities represent the key objects of interest to users of bibliographic data.  There are three groups of entities, which RDA evocatively refers to as Group 1, Group 2, and Group 3. Each of the entities defined in the model has a set of characteristics or attributes associated with it.

  • Group 1 entities are synonymous with WEMI: Work, Expression, Manifestation, and Item. They are the products of intellectual or artistic endeavor (e.g., books, movies, etc.).
  • Group 2 entities are Person, Family, and Corporate body; i.e., those responsible for the intellectual or artistic content, the physical production and dissemination, or the custodianship of the Group 1 entities (e.g., authors, translators, publishers, etc.).
  • Group 3 entities serve as the subjects of works: concept, object, event, and place, plus all of the Group 1 and 2 entities.

Attributes are characteristics associated with entities.  According to FRBR, “[t]he attributes of the entity serve as the means by which users formulate queries and interpret responses when seeking information about a particular entity.”  Examples of attributes associated with a work include the title of the work, the form of the work, and the date of the work.

Relationships “serve as the vehicle for depicting the link between one entity and another, and thus as the means of assisting the user to ‘navigate’ the universe that is represented in a bibliography, catalogue, or bibliographic database.”  In AACR2 cataloging, relationships are sometimes implied (e.g., the name in the 100 field of the MARC record is the author of the resource referred to in the 245 field) and sometimes stated explicitly (e.g., a note and added entry may tell us that the resource represented in the catalog record is a translation of another resource).  In RDA, catalogers are able to explicitly express many different kinds of relationships in both bibliographic records and authority records.

Source: Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (http://www.ifla.org/en/publications/functional-requirements-for-bibliographic-records)