Re: Open Library and RDF

Jeff,


> ex:Person a owl:Class ;
>        owl:equivalentClass foaf:Person .
>

I share Dan's interrogation, I don't see why the libraries couldn't use
foaf:Person class to type a resource representing a person in a person
authority record. An ontology isn't a XML schema : somes classes and
properties are declared in a namespace, but you are not mandatory to use
them and another properties in another namespaces can use these classes too
(e.g. BIO Vocabulary [1] or organization vocabulary [2]), we can't manage
all assertions in all semantic Web. Evidently, as you suggest, you can
create a specific class linked to foaf:Person class, but I can't see the
interest if the both classes represent the same thing except a
psychological/philosophical reason I don't see ;-) If you need somes
properties not declared in foaf namespace, you can create properties in your
own namespace using foaf:Person class in the domain or range of the
properties (See examples above).
The goal is to simplify interoperability between data, if everybody begins
to create their own classes, we will need a huge reasonner to process all
the data ;-)
But, effectively, there is one problem and that's why Dan introduces the new
foaf:focus property [3] in FOAF last release [4]. For me, there are three
entities in an authority record (If I understand good, VIAF model is based
on a closed logic) :
 * the record itself, it's a document managed by librarians with a creation
date, a modification date, a creator....
 * the conceptualization of the person in the referential/knowledge system
so it's the concept with a prefered label, alternative label,
bibliographical informations about this conceptualization... this resource
is used in bibliographical records.
 * the person itself in the real world with a name, a birth date, a death
date, a birth place...

So, if I want describe Victor Hugo's authority record in BnF catalogue [4],
there are three resources linked together (I don't use dereferenceable URI)
:

@prefix rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#> .
@prefix skos: <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#> .
@prefix foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/> .
@prefix dc: <http://purl.org/dc/terms/> .
@prefix rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .
@prefix bio: <http://purl.org/vocab/bio/0.1/> .

<ark:/12148/cb11907966z>
    a *foaf:Document* ;
    dc:created "1974-12-27" ;
    dc:identifier "FRBNF11907966" ;
    dc:modified "2010-05-25" ;
    *foaf:primaryTopic* <ark:/12148/cb119920811.authority> .

<ark:/12148/cb11907966z.authority>
    a *skos:Concept* ;
    skos:prefLabel "Hugo, Victor (1802-1885)"@fr ;
    skos:altLabel "Hougkṓ, Víktōr (1802-1885)", "Hugo,
Victor-Marie(1802-1885)"@fr ;
    skos:editorialNote "BN Cat. gén. 1960-1969", "BN Cat. gén. : Hugo (Comte
Victor-Marie)" ;
    skos:note "Artiste graphiste, auteur de lavis", "Membre de l'Académie
française (élu en 1841)", "Écrivain" ;
    *foaf:focus* <ark:/12148/cb11907966z.person> .

<ark:/12148/cb11907966z.person>
    a *foaf:Person* ;
    bio:event [
        bio:date "1802-02-26" ;
        bio:place [
            rdfs:label "Besançon"
        ] ;
        a bio:Birth
    ], [
        bio:date "1885-05-22" ;
        bio:place [
            rdfs:label "Paris"
        ] ;
        a bio:Death
    ] ;
    foaf:firstName "Hugo" ;
    foaf:gender "male" ;
    foaf:lastName "Victor" .

Evidently, it's just a suggestion and there are certainly lots of problems
to evaluate, but as you see, we can use foaf:Person (but not only) to
describe a person in libraries catalog.

My two cents...
Best regards
Gautier Poupeau


[1] http://vocab.org/bio/0.1/.html
[2] http://www.epimorphics.com/public/vocabulary/org.html
[3] http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/20100809.html#term_focus
[4] http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/20100809.html
[5] http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb11907966z/PUBLIC

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