CLBDR

The home of the Common Liturgical Books Data Repository, curated by the Catholic Engineering Task Force of the Catholic Digital Commons Foundation.

What is CLBDR?

The Common Liturgical Books Data Repository (CLBDR) provides canonicalized identifiers for the liturgical books of the Roman Rite and their editions: the Roman Missal, the Lectionary, the Liturgy of the Hours, the Roman Martyrology, the Pontifical and Ritual ordines (Marriage, Baptism, Ordinations, Confirmation, Penance, Exsequies…), the Book of Blessings, the Ceremonial of Bishops — each as a book identity, with its Latin typical editions and its approved vernacular editions as edition identities.

CLBDR absorbs and supersedes the CRMETDR (Common Roman Missal Editio Typica Data Repository): a single registry for all liturgical books avoids one acronym per book and dissolves naming collisions (a martyrology editions repository would also have been "CRMETDR"). The edition keys the CLEDR already uses (missale_romanum_1970, missale_romanum_2002, …) are preserved unchanged.

The two-level model

Books (data/books.json) — the abstract liturgical book, with a category (missal, lectionary, liturgy_of_the_hours, martyrology, pontifical, ritual, benedictional, ceremonial, sacramentary, chant) and, for the post-conciliar ordines, the collection they belong to (Pontificale Romanum, Rituale Romanum):

book:missale-romanum        book:ordo-lectionum-missae     book:martyrologium-romanum
book:liturgia-horarum       book:ordo-celebrandi-matrimonium (collection: rituale-romanum)
book:de-ordinatione         (collection: pontificale-romanum)  …

Editions (data/editions.json) — a specific promulgated edition of a book: <book>_<year> for Latin typical editions (martyrologium_romanum_2004), <book>_<territory-or-locale>_<year> for vernacular editions (martyrologium_romanum_cei_2004). Each edition carries its nature (typical edition, revised typical edition, emended reprint, approved vernacular edition, translation), promulgation decree and date, scope, locale, predecessor/successor — and its volume structure.

Volumes: the Latin reference is fixed, vernacular distributions vary

Multi-volume books are packaged differently across editions: the Latin Liturgia Horarum is four volumes, the Latin lectionary is defined by the Ordo Lectionum Missae (an index, not a set of physical volumes), while the Italian CEI lectionary spreads the same content over nine volumes and the US Lectionary for Mass over four. CLBDR therefore treats the Latin typical edition as the fixed content reference: each edition declares its own volumes, and each volume declares what it covers in terms of content sections defined by the Latin reference edition. See docs/schema.md.

Uses

• The CLEDR references Missal editions as the source establishing each liturgical celebration;
• the CRMEDR anchors martyrology eulogies to martyrologium_romanum_2004 and records per-edition attributes;
• the martyrology-api resolves (date, territory, locale) to the edition in force, to serve the right texts for any year.

Note: all IDs are drafts pending committee review; edition metadata (decree dates, volume structures) marked pending verification awaits confirmation against the promulgation decrees.