Entities, attributes, and bibliographic relationships : re-reading Barbara B. Tillett’s PhD dissertation thirty years after

A bibliographic relationship is the logical connection that is created between two or more bibliographic entities. These connections are an instrument of pri-mary importance to assist the user in the context of the catalogue. This essay intends to illustrate the PhD research study carried out by Barbara B. Tillett on bibliographic relationships from 1981-1987, the first exhaustive theoretical analysis on the bibliograph-ic universe whose consequences were at the basis of those changes that have made a great impact on cataloguing and bibliographic knowledge organi-zation over the last thirty years. Entities, attributes, and bibliographic relationships have played a central role in the creation of the conceptual model known as Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) and continue to be essential in the design of standards, such as RDA, Resource Description and Access, and IFLA LRM, IFLA Library Reference Model. The study of entities, attributes, and biblio graphic relationships is an important and active field that is greatly indebted to Tillett’s work.