Works, Expressions, Manifestations, Items: An Ontology

Abstract

The concepts first introduced in the FRBR document and known as "WEMI" have been employed in situations quite different from the library bibliographic catalog. This is evidence that a definition of similar classes that are more general than those developed for library usage would benefit metadata developers broadly. This article proposes a minimally constrained set of classes and relationships that could form the basis for a useful model of created works.