RDF, The 4th Brandenburger concerto and The Dublin Core

We had a long discussion, a librarian I know and myself. She'd got a
question forwarded to her from a Swedish initiative wanting to describe
various recordings (video, sound and you name it) using DC. The things
these people wanted to catalogue were hairy to say the least. All objects
to be described were instances of something else. Things like a recording
of a radio theatre performance, a recording of some music performed by X,
arranged by Y, and composed by Z.  The playwright had to be named, the
director, actors etc.

In my view, to describe such things one need to create a surrogate for the
"real"  thing (which usually doesn't exist on the web) and then express
the relation between the object at hand and that "real" thing. 

To be more concrete, let's assume that I'm able to conduct a chamber
orchestra, and that my orchestra and myself make a recording of the
4th Brandenburger concerto and publish it the mp3. Below, you'll find
what I think is fairly close to a correct DC description, which
wouldn't fall into the 1:1 pitfall. So, what do you think?

Yours,

Sigge

Example follows:
----------------


<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
         xmlns:wn="http://xmlns.com/wordnet/1.6/"
         xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
	 xmlns:dcq="http://dublincore.org/2000/03/13-dcq" >

<rdf:Description ID="4th_brandenburger_concerto">
  <dc:creator>
    <wn:Composer><rdf:value>J.S. Bach</rdf:value></wn:Composer>
  </dc:creator>
  <dc:title>The 4th Brandenburger Concerto</dc:title>
  <dc:type>musical score</dc:type>
  <dcq:HasFormat rdf:resource="http://somehost/sigges_recording.mp3" />
</rdf:Description>

<rdf:Description about="http://somehost/sigges_recording.mp3">
  <dc:creator>
    <wn:Conductor><rdf:value>Lundberg, Sigfrid</rdf:value></wn:Conductor>
  </dc:creator>
  <dc:creator><wn:Orchestra>
  <rdf:value>Sigge's chamber orchestra</rdf:value>
  </wn:Orchestra></dc:creator>
  <dc:title>The 4th Brandenburger Concerto</dc:title>
  <dc:type>electronic resource</dc:type>
  <dcq:IsFormatOf rdf:resource="#4th_brandenburger_concerto" />
</rdf:Description>

</rdf:RDF>


________________
Sigfrid Lundberg, Ph.D.,	.	siglun@munin.lub.lu.se
Lund University Library,		http://www.lub.lu.se/~siglun/
Netlab, PO Box 3, S-221 00 Lund		phone +46 (0)46 222 36 83

Received on Monday, 13 November 2000 09:09:26 UTC