5. Future Issues

Currently, there are several limitations of the AGRIS-AP that make it difficult to use it as a common exchange standard. Formats and cataloguing rules tend to work together, e.g. MARC21 and AACR2 mirror one another. AGRIS-AP is based on the rules of the AGRIS cataloguing system, which is non-ISBD. ISBD^[30] serves as the foundation for the majority of cataloguing codes used by the national libraries and major bibliographic agencies.) It lacks several bits of information of critical importance for ISBD-based cataloguing rules: e.g. no statement of responsibility, different rules for the extent statement and so on. For greater harmony, AGRIS-AP must be enhanced to allow for greater record sharing of ISBD-based records. In other cases, bibliographic treatments are not completely the same: FAO-managed development projects are treated in a special way in the AGRIS database, while they are considered as normal corporate bodies in most other databases.

In spite of our best efforts however, it should now be clear that loss of data is inevitable when exchanging metadata information. This is because there are concepts of bibliographic entities that are not shared by both sides: in the one case, encoding the language for the title, in the other case, no main/added entry or filing indicators. There is also the issue of granularity where one assigns separate codes for title and subtitle, while the other puts it into a single field. This also leads to loss of data.

The AGRIS-AP currently deals with the levels of structure and content designations. However, the content itself is very difficult to standardize and will remain an ongoing problem.

This may be helped as the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records are implemented (and modified) by bibliographic agencies around the world. AGRIS must also do its best to interoperate with these requirements. Some elements used by FRBR do not exist in AGRIS AP, for example, uniform title. Overcoming these problems will be difficult.