Re: Open Library and RDF

On Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 10:21:51PM +0100, gordon@gordondunsire.com wrote:
>                                             Despite powerful economic drivers,
> weaker models have generally not been successful in academic and national
> library environments (or in larger public reference libraries).

But have stronger models really had an opportunity to
prove their success in the new environment of the Web age?
And are AACR or MARC considered "models" in the sense of FRBR
and RDA?  As I see it, the advent of the (Semantic) Web marks
the first time in the history of knowledge representation
that knowledge producers are faced with the challenge (and
opportunity) of knitting together independently produced
knowledge representations on the basis of machine-processable
languages on a global scale.  This is much different than the
situation of a closed (albeit large) silo of library records
based on institutionally mandated data formats.

> If non-library communities wish to take advantage of the vast experience of
> professional librarians represented in the FR and RDA models, then AAA, surely?

What is AAA... [1]?

[1] http://www.all-acronyms.com/AAA

> Of course, if library communities were (generally) resourced by commercial
> organisations, non-heritage government agencies and the like, then I'm sure they
> would be as responsive to the needs of such communities as they are to their
> actual users.

It is true that libraries have been and may well remain the
primary users of library standards, but if the point is to
produce data that also plays well outside the library's walls,
this must be considered in its design.

> As it is, both the FR and RDA committees are actively considering developing
> unbounded super-class/property versions of their models, resources permitting.
> Expect some announcements soon.

That sounds promising!  Actually, I have no quarrel with
highly constrained models for use by trained professionals
in libraries.  Within the library walls, production of data
can be tightly defined and usage guidelines enforced by
detailed application profiles.  But this can perhaps be done
while exposing data that is not so strongly specified as to
continually raise fatal ontological exceptions when linked
into mash-ups.

Will you be on Thursday's call?  I'd like to put a slot on the
agenda for a report from you and others (Marcia, Emmanuelle,
Bernard...?) about the IFLA conference.  It would be great if
you, Karen, and Marcia could briefly report on the status of
the FR and RDA efforts.  I'd be interested to hear your views
on whether the LLD XG could or should try to reach out to
those communities or, for example, suggest follow-on actions
for a wider review of these vocabularies from a Semantic
Web perspective.

Tom

Received on Sunday, 15 August 2010 22:48:07 UTC