Re: Linked Data re Non-Profits and NGO's. Have data, need vocabulary.

Bob,

If you have a complex dataset in an area with well-established  
metadata conventions (e.g. bibliographic information datasets), then  
it's usually easy to re-use existing vocabularies.

Outside of these areas, if there are no widely accepted standards,  
then it's quite often necessary to roll your own. That's often easier  
than cobbling together a solution from ill-fitting bits and pieces.  
You can add mappings to other vocabularies later, based on community  
feedback.

That being said:

For addresses there's an RDF version of vCard:
http://norman.walsh.name/2005/12/05/vcard

For people, obviously there's FOAF:
http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1

All the best,
Richard


On 27 Jun 2008, at 00:19, Bob Wyman wrote:

> I would like to make available as Linked Data several databases  
> describing several million non-profits, NGO's and foundations. The  
> data includes things like name of organization, address, budget,  
> source of funds, major programs, key personnel, relationships to  
> other organizations, area of expertise, etc.
>
> What I don't have is an RDF vocabulary with which to describe these  
> things. While I could define one myself, I would like to base my  
> work on existing standards," or common practice, however, seemingly  
> endless digging through the web indicates that there aren't any  
> obvious "standards" for describing even basic things like address in  
> RDF. Perhaps, I'm looking in the wrong places...
>
> Ideally, I would find some well formed vocabulary for a "Business  
> Description" that I could use or adapt. I would appreciate it if  
> anyone could give me pointers to either such a well worked  
> vocabulary or at least to smaller vocabularies for things like  
> address that I could use in composing a vocabulary with which to  
> publish this data. Can you help?
>
> bob wyman
>