Re: Question about MARCXML to Models transformation

Tom, are you thinking that this is a statement for the group's report?

kc

Quoting Thomas Baker <tbaker@tbaker.de>:

> On Tue, 8 March, Ross wrote:
>> This is not to say that the FRBR model is wrong or even necessarily flawed.
>> I just think that applying it verbatim to RDF through OWL with an
>> application profile that is intended to enforce its rules is more likely a
>> barrier to adoption than it is insurance of semantic interoperability.
>
> On Tue, 8 March, Jeff wrote:
>> The constraints found in OWL could be enforced by another layer such as
>> Pellet ICV or Application Profiles, but we shouldn't assume these layers
>> are implied in the "strictness of FRBRer".
>
> On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 4:06 PM, Richard Light  
> <richard@light.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> I strongly agree with the thought that an entity can be given a URL, and
>> thereby you can finesse the need for the "concept is the sum of its
>> properties" approach. We will have many similar cases in the museum world,
>> where information about an entity of interest (person, place, event, ...)
>> will be incomplete, or uncertain, or both. This shouldn't stop us from
>> asserting what we _do_ know (or believe).
>
> To summarize, can we say the following?
>
> FRBR and RDA can improve the precision of resource description
> and increase the opportunities for sharing descriptions at
> various levels by making modeling distinctions grounded in
> a coherent intellectual model.
>
> However, for the linked data context, outside of the library
> silo -- where knowledge about the things being described may
> be imperfect, where the people making descriptions may have
> an imperfect grasp of the models or of their applicability,
> and where people may have data or software that lack clear
> support of the models -- FRBR and RDA should be made available
> for use in a form that is ontologically tolerant.
>
> The sort of strict enforcement of rules and that served the
> cause of data sharing in a time when data exchange required
> the integrity of shared formats is not only not necessary
> in the more loosely aligned linked data context - it is
> counterproductive.
>
> The FRBR and RDA vocabularies can be defined in an
> ontologically tolerant manner, such that data which uses the
> models imperfectly -- or data about things to which the models
> imperfectly apply -- will not raise fatal exceptions when
> linked with data that may be simpler, vaguer, or simply based
> on different models.  Apparent misalignments, or contradictions
> to the logic of the models, or gaps in descriptions, should
> be flagged with nothing stronger than helpful error messages.
>
> Application profiles, whether defined using OWL constraints
> or through other means, still provide a way to constrain the use
> of such vocabularies to an arbitrary degree of strictness
> for the purposes of enforcing data integrity within a silo.
>
> Hard-coding such constraints into the vocabularies themselves
> imposes that ontological strictness on all downstream users
> of the vocabularies, thus raising the bar to their adoption
> and compromising their potential impact outside of the
> library world.
>
> Tom
>
>
> --
> Tom Baker <tbaker@tbaker.de>
>
>



-- 
Karen Coyle
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
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skype: kcoylenet

Received on Wednesday, 9 March 2011 03:50:40 UTC