RE: Question about MARCXML to Models transformation

Quoting "Tillett, Barbara" <btil@loc.gov>:

> I basically agree, but want to point out that FRBR's WEMI are not  
> strictly hierarchical but rather a network graph (don't forget about  
> the many to many relationships for the WEMI - it's not just one to  
> one or one to many or many to one - there are also many to many).
>

I think this is a definitional distinction that doesn't change the  
underlying problem, which is that WEMI are not *things* in the E-R  
sense, but they are a single thing that has been broken into  
_dependent parts_. That is why it is extremely hard to model them,  
either in a semantic web sense or in something like a graph or  
topic-like map. In that sense, Group 1 of FRBR is very different from  
Groups 2 and 3 which have as their classes a set of independent  
things, each of which is complete in itself.

I don't know of an analogous situation so I can't give an analogy...  
but there's something ... interesting ... about an entity that can  
have relationships (like the Manifestation having a relationship to a  
series) even though that first entity is unable to stand alone. I  
haven't seen any discussion of "dependent things" in any semantic web  
community arenas, so I don't know if this is a known "case" or not. I  
just know that I struggle with it greatly.

kc

-- 
Karen Coyle
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet

Received on Monday, 7 March 2011 14:31:10 UTC