VIAF contributor model

The VIAF RDF is badly in need of an update. For example, VIAF has a bad
habit of assuming that "clusters" automatically map to "Person".
Upgrading it to recognize the reality of "Organization"  and perhaps a
few others shouldn't be too hard, but there are other issues worth
considering.

 

After closer inspection, it looks like the VIAF ontology
<http://viaf.org/ontology/1.1/>  reinvents some key aspects of SKOS. It
would be nice to start factoring out these misalignments ASAP. This
group's input on the possibilities would be greatly appreciated.

 

Background: VIAF started out using foaf:Person for its "real world
objects", switched to skos:Concept, and was starting to wobble back to
foaf:Person. At that point, the decision was made to identify both for
the sake of argument:

 

http://viaf.org/viaf/102333412/#foaf:Person

http://viaf.org/viaf/102333412/#skos:Concept

 

It was far from clear at the time whether both made sense, separate
identity was necessary, or what property should be used to connect them.


 

At the F2F, Martin Malmsten (who is involved with contributions to VIAF
via SELIBR) pointed out the new foaf:focus element that seems to do a
very good job of rationalizing for the connection.

 

http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/#term_focus

 

Like VIAF, SELIBR also coins URIs for foaf:Person and skos:Concept and
this seems like a good model for other contributors and VIAF itself to
follow.

 

I'm also inclined to believe that skos:ConceptScheme should be used to
differentiate different "sources" in VIAF. This could and probably
should be done regardless of whether the contributors understand or
publish SKOS themselves. The attached UML is intended to show how this
could be conceptualized. This presumably requires some explanation, but
hopefully a picture is worth a thousand words.

 

I'm also pretty convinced that the http://viaf.org/ontology/1.1/#Heading
class needs to be bound to skosxl:Label class in some way
(rdfs:subClassOf?). I don't think it can completely go away, though,
because of inconvenient restrictions on the skosxsl:prefLabel and
skosxl:altLabel.

 

Thoughts or questions?

 

Jeff

 

---

Jeffrey A. Young
Software Architect
OCLC Research, Mail Code 410
OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc.
6565 Kilgour Place
Dublin, OH 43017-3395
www.oclc.org <http://www.oclc.org> 

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