Os Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records no contexto da Web Semântica: as contribuições de Paul Otlet

Abstract

We examine how the conceptual model of Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records is related to the notion of documentary unit attributed to Otlet and present in the Traité de Documentation, whose principles are applied to support the foundations of the Universal Bibliographic Repertory. In theoretical and methodological terms, this is an exploratory research with a historical and documentary nature that seeks to ascertain the classical assumptions of representation and organization of information and relate them to the context of the Semantic Web. We analyze the results of simulations of the application of the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records carried out in Acesso Livre à Informação Científica of Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária to illustrate how Otlet's theses are applied to these digital bibliographies. We discuss the advantages of repositories for the modeling processes since the Dublin Core format allows the use of languages such as the Resource Description Framework for the description of metadata, which enhances information retrieval. We conclude by demonstrating how the principles of monograph, continuity and plurality are expressed in the entities in Group I of Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records conceptual model, which reveals methodological affinities between the model and Otlet's theses. We point out that actions directed towards encouraging the description of bibliographic metadata in Resource Description Framework statements will, in the near future, allow each resource to be identified in a meaningful way through a universal identifier - Uniform Resource Identifier -, allowing the database records to be interconnected and access to the user to a huge amount of stored information, as stated by Otlet when developing the Universal Bibliographic Repertory.