- From: Aida Slavic <aida@acorweb.net>
- Date: Wed, 12 May 2004 20:50:32 +0100
- To: "'Houghton,Andrew'" <houghtoa@oclc.org>, <public-esw-thes@w3.org>
>I see SKOS as a dumb-down approach, just like Dublin Core is. Most of the time you don't need the heavy weight and all the rules associated with MARC21 or UniMarc to >describe vocabularies. You want a relatively simpler and understandable format that All depends on the objective behind SKOS. Generally speaking it is better to make sure that dumbing down is a decision and choice left to those who sell/apply/implement systems and not for those creating standards. I would also make sure that it can accommodate both thesauri and classifications and subject heading systems in their standard form or as authority files. Provision for complexity does not stop ppl who want to do it simply and cheaply .. dumbing down stops those who have more expensive and complex needs. Fancy you should mention Dublin Core as I wanted to use it to illustrate the opposite. Producing metadata is far too expensive to be created only to find out that it does not work in IR - which is what was nasty surprise for many attracted to DC promise for cheep/simple/easy - deciding to ignore golde GIGO rule (garbage in garbage out). Which is why we have been flooded with of DC application profiles, vocabularies, rules, guidelines - each project spending money and time to write its own metadata standard within DC standard to fill the dumbed down gap, inventing qualifiers, syntax and refining semantic for generously empty DC elements. Having said that - DC had its positive role in teaching people outside bibliographic domain about descriptive metadata role, cost and use. SKOS appeared to me as a big step forward from what could be called metadata infancy. My suggestion to have possibility of choice and especially case 2) [structured heading with specific tags] was precisely because this has been missing up to now in MARC formats which were created with Dewey and Library of Congress Classification in mind - exclusively for library systems that do not use classification for information retrieval anyway but rather for shelf arrangement which means mainly American libraries. Both MARC21 (former USMARC Classification Format) and now UNIMARC Concise classification format draft form 2001, fail to provide structured heading for classification which causes problems in searching and managing faceted classifications. The poor exploitation of classification in library systems because of the MARC being dumbed down is complaint that drags through the literature since Wajenberg article in 1983 followed by Cochrane, Drabenstott, Liu, Goedert, Pollitt etc. as you probably know yourself. As for SKOS I am not sure I understand why 94(73) would be easier to parse when downloading data than <tag>94<tag2>(73) both forms being particular to a specific systems and both can be interpreted only within this identified system itself anyway. For instance udc number 94(73) is encoded in one of my databases as c94f(73) .... why would SKOS be concerned with a form of my prefered term???? The only problem is that if there is possibility to have compound terms encoded and not encoded it should be possible to say which rule applies for the given URI... Aida
Received on Wednesday, 12 May 2004 15:51:08 UTC