Bibliographic family in Japanese library catalog: Survey in J-BISC and comparative analysis with previous studies

Purpose: In recent years, "a work" is attracting attention as an entity for information retrieval. This paper investigates associations of works which are called "bibliographic family" represented in the Japanese library catalog. Methods: To investigate bibliographic families in the Japanese library catalog, a survey was conducted using a random sample from J-BISC. Research questions were: 1) what proportion of works in the Japanese library catalog have derivative works, 2) how populous each bibliographic family is, 3) how frequently each type of derivative relationship appears, and 4) whether there are unique characteristics of bibliographic relationships in Japan compared with studies from other countries. From J-BISC, 669 works that had been recorded up to January 2005 were extracted as the sample. To search for members of bibliographic families, NDL-OPAC and Webcat Plus was used. To investigate the characteristics of bibliographic families of works in the Japanese library catalog, the results of previous studies were compared and examined. Results: The survey results show that 1) 25.9% of works in the sample have derivative works, 2) the average size of bibliographic families in the sample is 1.80, and 3) successive relationships account for 63.6% of all types of derivative relationships. Based on these results, networks of bibliographic families really exist, and so it is valid to use the links to improve the library catalog. From a comparison with five previous studies in the U.S. and Slovenia, the phenomenon of works which are called bibliographic families is free from locality and language, and shows "universality.".