Re: [Dbpedia-discussion] Using DBpedia resources as skos:Concepts?

Antoine

I think you answered perfectly Pat's interrogations about SKOS. But at the
end of this long and instructive thread both of you seem to have forgotten
to answer explicitly Richard's original question. Are the following
assertions consistent?

<http://mydataset/433256>
     a skos:Concept;
     owl:sameAs <http://dbpedia.org/resource/Michelle_Obama>

You defend, and I agree, that a skos:Concept is basically a "library
business object", likely to bear properties such as Dublin Core (created,
modified, creator, publisher) which must not be conflated with properties of
the "thing" (with due respect) Michelle Obama herself (daughterOf, motherOf,
marriedTo, birthDate etc.)

So obviously, the answer to Richard's question is : no, you should not do
that, because doing so, you identify animals living in different spaces, the
person and the librarian business object used to represent it. DBpedia
people, places, battles etc. seem definitely not fit to be instances of
skos:Concept, even if LCSH or Rameau or Richard's system contains
skos:Concept(s) representing them.
OTOH, looking with librarian glasses on, DBpedia *entries* are also somehow
"concepts", since they could also bear Dublin Core stuff like the first
version of DBpedia in which they have been published, number of related
DBpedia concepts ... or any librarian workflow record of the same kind. In
this case, Richard could assert a skos:exactMatch relationship between his
entry and the DBpedia one.

But if the DBpedia entry is supposed to represent the thing herself, as the
predicates it bears, and the excellent (as usual) arguments of Pat, seem to
prove, we're back to the initial question : what predicate should poor
Richard (and myself) use if we want nevertheless to express the fact that
his specific record/entry/heading/concept is a proxy in his system for the
person Michelle Obama? We definitely miss, as I have kept stressing a lot of
times in the past, a specific vocabulary to indicate this level of
indirection, as also suggested in Danbri's answer.
And a side question is, if the DBpedia URI represents the thing itself and
not a DBpedia proxy of it, where do I put the above workflow information?
The date of publication of the DBpedia entry vs the birth date of Michelle
Obama ...

Bernard


2009/11/8 Antoine Isaac <aisaac@few.vu.nl>

> Pat Hayes a écrit :
>
>
>> On Nov 5, 2009, at 2:51 PM, Antoine Isaac wrote:
>>
>>  Hi Kingsley,
>>>
>>>  when specifically does one use "skos:exactMatch" etc? Based on my
>>>> response John (few minutes ago), I am assuming that the partitioning of so
>>>> called Named Entities and Subject Matter Concepts was the line of
>>>> delineation sought in SKOS which is about Subject Matter/Heading style
>>>> Concept Schemes?
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Well, as Leonard just put it, there can perfectly concepts for persons
>>> (as part of authority files in Libraries, for example).
>>> You could have a skos:Concept Mrs_Obama with a Library A as dc:creator,
>>> and another Concept Michelle_Obama created by Library B. Using owl:sameAs
>>> between those is certainly not ideal, as you end up with one resource being
>>> created by two different agents, and probably at different times, and so on.
>>> exactMatch fits that case.
>>>
>>>
>> If I follow this and your previous post, then sameAs will almost never be
>> true in the SKOS world, correct?
>>
>
>
> Yes.
>
>
>  The only case I can think of would be where a library puts a new indexing
>> system in place (for its existing records), and retains the old one for
>> legacy reasons, with sameAs links between the old and new indices.
>>
>
>
> Not even then... If C1 is the legacy concept, and C2 the new one, they
> would have different management info, perhaps different notes/definitions
> attached to them, semantic relations (broader/narrower/related) to different
> concepts...
> So I would advise against using sameAs in such a concept.
> sameAs would be rather used in case where different identification schemes
> have been created for one concept, as in [1]
>
>
>  That is, co-reference between items in thesauri (both referring to FLOTUS)
>> is irrelevant to identity of the *concepts*.
>>
>> Do I have this more or less right?
>>
>
>
> Yes. Of course one can argue that it is a necessary condition, but not a
> sufficient one.
> By the way, Pat, I hope that the example [1] can shed a bit more light in
> your quest for what a SKOS concept is. Especially you can look at how the
> dcterms:created and dcterms:modified are used.
> I guess that the general idea of Murano glass did not come into existence
> at 1986-02-11T00:00:00-04:00.
> SKOS concepts are very practical entities, almost "documents" (albeit very
> specific, controlled documents) about more general ideas. And of course
> these things can exist for persons, eg. [2].
>
> Antoine
>
> [1] http://id.loc.gov/authorities/sh85055118.rdf
> [2] http://stitch.cs.vu.nl/vocabularies/rameau/ark:/12148/cb11944615b
>
>
>>
>>>

-- 
Bernard Vatant
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Vocabulary & Data Engineering
Tel:       +33 (0) 971 488 459
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