- From: Leonard Will <L.Will@willpowerinfo.co.uk>
- Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 14:49:01 +0100
- To: "'public-esw-thes@w3.org'" <public-esw-thes@w3.org>
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 -- Willpower Information (Partners: Dr Leonard D Will, Sheena E Will) Information Management Consultants Tel: +44 (0)20 8372 0092 27 Calshot Way, Enfield, Middlesex EN2 7BQ, UK. Fax: +44 (0)870 051 7276 L.Will@Willpowerinfo.co.uk Sheena.Will@Willpowerinfo.co.uk ---------------- <URL:http://www.willpowerinfo.co.uk/> -----------------
Received on Friday, 1 October 2004 13:49:24 UTC