bibliotek-o is a framework for modeling bibliographic metadata as linked data. Consisting of the BIBFRAME ontology at its core, the bibliotek-o ontology defines fragments of external ontologies and an application profile specifying the recommended implementation of these ontologies. This report presents the background and motivation behind the bibliotek-o framework, including an overview of the model, ontology principles and best practices guiding its development, a description of aligned tooling under development, and a report on the project’s status and outputs. A small sample of discrete patterns in which bibliotek-o deviates from BIBFRAME is provided to demonstrate motivations and modeling principles. Our goal is to illustrate the strengths of BIBFRAME, while suggesting areas where BIBFRAME should evolve to a more streamlined and expressive model. We aim to encourage feedback and community engagement in ongoing development of the framework outlined in this paper.