Re: Open Library and RDF

All
 
See the Vocabulary Mapping Framework project and matrix at:
 
http://cdlr.strath.ac.uk/VMF/
 
for a solution to the "roles" issue. Core idea is to exhaust the
relator/property space, arrange roles in property hierarchies, and plug external
vocabularies into the black box. Then minimum pathways between vocabularies can
be computed (this work is yet to be funded or carried out).
 
Cheers
 
Gordon
 

On 14 August 2010 at 21:40 "Young,Jeff (OR)" <jyoung@oclc.org> wrote:

> Tom,
>
> I didn't mean to imply that Creator *should* be modeled as a class name.
> It's more of a comment about naming properties more carefully to avoid
> this confusion.
>
> Jeff
>
> Thomas Baker <tbaker@tbaker.de> wrote:
>
> Hi Jeff,
>
> On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 06:02:59PM -0400, Young,Jeff (OR) wrote:
> > IMO, the term "Creator" implies a class name. In contrast, "is the
> > creator of" or "was created by" implies a property. I promise not to
> > whine if "creator" is defined as a property, but only if its range is a
> > class named "Creator". ;-)
>
> Hmm, I would argue that it is unnecessary and perhaps even
> counterproductive to create a class named "Creator" :-)
>
> The Dublin Core property dcterms:creator, for example, has
> a range of dcterms:Agent, not Creator.
>
> What if a given member of a Creator class were the Subject
> of a book, or its Translator or Illustrator?  Triples
> saying that that person is _essentially_ of type "Creator"
> (or Subject or Translator or Illustrator) could muddy the
> waters: an Illustrator has translated this and been the
> subject of that...
>
> To my way of thinking, in the example above, it is better
> simply to use a property to establish a creation relationship
> between a given person and given resource.
>
> I'm not entirely up-to-date on the RDA-in-RDF discussions but
> I have the impression that this still is an issue there too.
>
> Are there thought to be things that are _essentially_ members
> of a class Manifestation, and others _essentially_ of a class
> Expression, such that it would a logical contradiction in
> terms of the RDA data model if a given resource is asserted
> to be a member of both the class Expression and the class
> Manifestion?  If so, can we be confident that RDA-trained
> (or non-RDA-trained) catalogers will use the classes so
> consistently that contradiction need not be feared?  Is it
> not enough to describe manifestions in a certain way (i.e.,
> with certain properties) and expressions in another?
>
> More generally, if "A hasFriend B", is B essentially a member
> of the class "Friends"?  "Friend" with respect to whom?
> ("Creator" of what? "Manifestation" of what?)
>
> The point of modeling style is that it can be expressive
> enough to let the constellation of relations (RDF properties),
> within which a resource is embedded, define that resource --
> in effect to describe things more with verbs than with nouns.
>
> Maybe we need a Strunk-like "Elements of RDF Style":
> "Omit needless classes!" "Vigorous modeling is concise!"
> "Do not explain too much!"... :-)
>
> Tom
>
> --
> Thomas Baker <tbaker@tbaker.de>
>
>
>
>
>