Re: [Proposal][SKOS-Core] skos:denotes

In message <350DC7048372D31197F200902773DF4C05E50C5A@exchange11.rl.ac.uk
> on Fri, 1 Oct 2004, "Miles, AJ (Alistair)" <A.J.Miles@rl.ac.uk> wrote

>>properties like 'skos:scopeNote' seem  appropriate to  describe an
>>abstract concept, but not to describe a person.
>>
>> I.e. in logic speak the classes skos:Concept and foaf:Person should be
>> disjoint.

I can't pretend to be familiar with all the subtle distinctions that are
being made in your different encoding schemes, but just note that in the
thesaurus world "persons" (or more idiomatically "people") is a specific
type of concept, so as far as we are concerned they are not "disjoint",
if I understand that term correctly. To quote from the draft revised
British Standard:

        6.1.1.2 The concepts represented by descriptors may be
        considered as belonging to mutually exclusive categories based
        on shared characteristics. The following examples are indicative
        but do not list all the possible categories.
        . . .
        h) Types of people and organizations
                EXAMPLES
                charities
                children
                international nongovernmental organizations
                nations
                poets
                visually impaired people
        . . .
        6.1.1.3 Unique entities expressed as proper names may also be
        included in a subject thesaurus, where they should be used only
        for records that are about the person, document or object etc.
        . . .
        c) Individuals, organizational posts and corporate bodies
                EXAMPLES
                Burns, Robert
                United Nations. Secretary-General
                World Health Organization

It is perfectly reasonable and logical that, when appropriate, a scope
note can be attached to the concept of either a class of people,
defining for example what is covered by "poets", or to the concept of an
individual instance, saying that within the thesaurus the term "Burns,
Robert" is used just for the Scottish poet rather than any other person
of the same name.

Leonard
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Received on Friday, 1 October 2004 13:49:24 UTC