Re: SemWeb terminology page

So we should choose two different terms and in our report explain those 
terms in relation to terms that may be more familiar to specific parts 
of our audience.

"Value vocabularies" seems to be working for most.

A reason not to choose "properties" as you suggest is that those are RDF 
centric terms, so none of our audience will get it immediately, while 
choosing e.g. metadata element set has the advantage that some in the 
audience will immediately get it.

Mark

On 02/11/2010 16:49, Karen Coyle wrote:
> The term "vocabularies" gets used for a lot of different things in
> semantic web discussions. However, as this thread shows, there isn't an
> obvious set of clear terms to use in its place.
>
> Depending on who you are talking to, the things that DCMI calls "value
> vocabularies" are "controlled lists of terms" or "authority lists" or
> "pick lists." Although 'value vocabulary' is a clear distinction to
> adherents of DCAM, I have not heard that phrase used by any other
> communities. When I talk to librarians, I often use the phrase
> "controlled list" in my explanation. It would be good to get the 'value
> vocabulary' concept disseminated broadly.
>
> The analogy to properties is "data elements" in the traditional IT
> world. In fact, the MARC documentation refers to the fields and
> subfields as data elements. For that reason, "metadata element" and
> "metadata element set" seem to resonate with folks who are already
> somewhat familiar with a data processing model. However, I worry that
> people will assume that a property is the same as a data element.
>
> The terms "property," "value" and "statement" have no meaning for folks
> in the library world. These are new concepts, and should be introduced
> as representing a new way of creating and using metadata. I think it is
> legitimate to say that MARC does not have properties (in the semweb
> sense), and there are no statements in a MARC record as it is coded
> today. The advantage here is that librarians can move to new concepts
> and a new vocabulary about those concepts, which I think will help keep
> them from dragging the old ideas along with them into the semantic web.
>
> Therefore (after all of that), I would vote for using 'value
> vocabularies' and 'properties' ('set of properties' for something like
> foaf or dcterms?), but explain them in terms of controlled lists and
> data elements, emphasizing the differences.
>
> Yep, easier said than done.
>
> kc
>
> Quoting Mark van Assem <mark@cs.vu.nl>:
>
>>
>>> Generally the whole situation is a mess, and can only be understood
>>> sociologically / historically. Asking whether eg. 'schemas' and
>>> 'ontologies' are the same or different doesn't get us very far. Asking
>>> about which communities used which terms maybe gets us a bit
>>> further...
>>
>> Ok, If the question is about communities we're communicating with, then
>>
>> "element set" would probably work here
>>
>> (come to think of it, I used "metadata element set" to refer to DC etc.
>> in my thesis, and later link that to the term "schemas" to denote how
>> DC looks like in RDF, which then become "metadata element schemas"
>>
>>
>> I also like "value vocabulary" because it sort of indicates that they
>> go into the object part ("value") of a triple.
>>
>>> I quite like 'vocabulary' as it covers schema, ontology, metadata set,
>>> and also SKOS/thesaurus stuff too.
>>
>> Yes, but we need separate terms for the things "vocabulary" may
>> encompass. In other words it's either too broad or means different
>> things to different people.
>>
>> Mark
>>
>> --
>> Mark van Assem - Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
>> http://www.cs.vu.nl/~mark
>
>
>

-- 
  Mark van Assem - Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
            http://www.cs.vu.nl/~mark

Received on Tuesday, 2 November 2010 16:08:41 UTC