Re: SemWeb terminology page

On 4 Dec 2010, at 17:34, Young,Jeff (OR) wrote:

>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: public-lld-request@w3.org [mailto:public-lld-request@w3.org] On
>> Behalf Of Karen Coyle
>> Sent: Saturday, December 04, 2010 7:16 AM
>> To: public-lld
>> Subject: Re: SemWeb terminology page
>> 
>> Quoting Antoine Isaac <aisaac@few.vu.nl>:
>> 
>>> Hello Karen,
>>> 
>>> Would that definition of Svenonius be compatible with the view in
>> [1]?
>> 
>> I don't believe it is, which is why I posted it here. This definition
>> has also helped me think about the models developed by FRAD and FRSAD,
>> which both have an entity for the authoritative term itself. (And this
>> relates to the post I forwarded about MADS.) A primary purpose of
>> library authority data is to control the text string itself as a
>> surrogate for the thing it represents. This is in addition to
>> developing an identity for the thing. (I'm not saying this is *right*,
>> I'm just saying this is what libraries claim to be doing.)
> 
> Is the "text string" or the "authority record" the surrogate? Here's my
> guess:
> 
> Early library models used text strings as "controlled access points". As
> Karen implies, we probably believed the "text string" was "the
> surrogate". Authority records came along with opaque identifiers and
> before we knew it the "text strings" in them started changing over time.
> We reluctantly resigned ourselves to thinking of the authority record as
> "the surrogate". (Idealized immutable "controlled access points" still
> seem to haunt our thinking.)
> 
> In a Linked Data context, the idea of surrogate appears to be outmoded.
> Distributed agents are able to identify "the thing" directly without
> reference through a surrogate.

Or, in another view, the identifier (which used to be a "text string" is now a "URI"). That is, the library model and Linked Data model are compatible, in so far as we are willing to use identifiers instead of text-string 'nomen'.

-Jodi

Received on Sunday, 5 December 2010 14:05:26 UTC