Comments on ISA People Vocabulary

Hi All,
A few weeks ago, Phil mentioned the ISA Vocabularies and asked for feedback from the group. I received the following comments and questions about the ISA People Vocabulary (https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/asset/core_person/description) from Barbara Tillett, Chief of Cataloging, Policy & Support, at the Library of Congress.

Thanks,
Tina Gheen
_____________________________________

Query from Barbara Tillett (btil@loc.gov<mailto:btil@loc.gov>)
April 6, 2012

Conventions for Capitalization
Is there any significance to the anomaly of the uppercase P in Person for the class?  All the properties are lowercase for the first word.  Is that the convention to distinguish a class from a property?

Properties
Would it be useful to also include the RDA properties for person that apply (understanding RDA include imaginary/fictitious/and non-human identities for individuals as persons, so is broader than this proposed "Person" for this vocabulary)?

RDA also includes:
Title of the person (the Core Vocabulary mentions these under the Property, name, as potentially being part of other properties).
Fuller form of name
Other designation associated with the person
Country associated with the person
Place of residence
Address of the person
Affiliation
Language of the person
Field of activity of the person
Profession or occupation
Biographical information
Identifier for the person

Class "Person"
Why was it decided to limit this to "a real person, alive or dead"?  In the bibliographic universe, it is important to recognize any individual identity that may have some role with respect to a bibliographic resource (something a library would include in its collections or make known to its users).

Property "name"
This property overlaps with several others and in the definitions it is not clear that they are or should be mutually exclusive - especially for "alternativeName', which definition clearly includes 'name', and for "birthName"..

Property "alternativeName"
The definition example "Paddy Ashdown" and the usage note to not include nicknames seem to contradict.  Why not include nicknames, by-names, etc. as alternative names?  It was not clear from the printed version what was actually the Usage note and what the Definition for many of these, so perhaps I'm misunderstanding based on the layout.

Definitions for Properties (placeOfBirth, countryOfBirth, countryOfDeath, citizenship)
I highly recommend separately listing the domain and range for properties apart from their definition and not making the connection to 'schema:' as part of a definition (see below).  Each property should have a "real" definition for it so it is clear no matter what language is used for the term/label.

Connections to "schema:" (birthDate, deathDate, placeOfBirth, placeOfDeath, countryOfBirth, countryOfDeath, citizenship)
I also highly recommend putting the connection to 'schema:' as the QName (as done for 'gender', 'birthDate', 'deathDate'), or at least as Usage Note or set up another category for Equivalents.  Please do not include it as the definition, as that conflates the actual relationship to that other schema..

A question for all such schemas:  how can one show the applicable dates or time span for a given property, like citizenship?  Many can be repeatable, and how does one attach the scope (time span) relevant to the value assigned?