Re: Modelling library, catalogue, record, and item

Hi Jakob,

Thanks for this -- and especially for delineating the entities of interest.

On 13 Dec 2010, at 16:22, Jakob Voss wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I quickly hacked an RDF wrapper to some of our bibliographic databases. just a few million records. There is no SPARQL, content negotiation etc. because I first want to fix the model.
> 
> Maybe you can have a look at this entry (in Turtle syntax)
> 
> http://uri.gbv.de/database/opac-de-7:ppn:609060929
> 
> I found there are at least four entities to model, but the existing ontologies are pretty disappointing for library data:
> 
> 
> 1.) The record in a library catalog:
> http://uri.gbv.de/database/opac-de-7:ppn:609060929

A few comments:
        dc:creator "Michael Waitzmann; Roland Heinzmann" ;
I'd expect two dc:creator lines here, one per creator.

       dc:publisher "Karlsruhe : Landesanstalt für Umweltschutz"
 
Ideally, the publisher's name should ideally not be prefaced with the location.

Similarly, I suspect that GUK is a separate term (short title) here:
    dcterms:title "Göttinger Universitätskatalog (GUK)" ;
> 
> 
> 2.) The publication that is described by the library record. I used a blank node to model this, because known identifiers (such as ISBN) are not as unique as they seem to be. I hesitated to make this a bibo:Document from the Bibliographic ontology, because the latter says "A document (noun) is a bounded physical representation of body of information".

This is useful feedback; I hope you'll share it with BIBO!

> But we also have non-physical publications. The right class could be frbr:work, frbr:expression, or frbr:manifestation, but also skos:Concept, depending on the record.
> 
> 
> 3.) The library catalog as whole:
> http://uri.gbv.de/database/opac-de-7
> 
> The best classes I found to models library catalogues are:
> 
> cdtype:CatalogueOrIndex as described at
> http://dublincore.org/groups/collections/collection-application-profile/
> 
> and void:Dataset from voiD as described at http://vocab.deri.ie/void/
> 
> 
> 4.) The library as institution:
> info:isil/DE-7
> http://lobid.org/organisation/DE-7
> 
> ISIL is an *international* system to uniquely identify libraries, so we should use this instead of local systems like the American OCLC- or WorldCat identifiers.

I had to look up ISIL, so I'll save others the effort! The standard is closed [1] and I found useful info via the Danish Agency for Libraries and Media:
http://biblstandard.dk/isil/

-Jodi

[1] http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=52666

> 
> 
> Note that the pysical holding is *not* included in this model yet - some people think that physical objects are the core of library data, but they are only the most visible part. Apparently current ontologies, that aim at library data, have a narrow focus on physical documents.
> 
> Jakob
> 
> -- 
> Jakob Voß <jakob.voss@gbv.de>, skype: nichtich
> Verbundzentrale des GBV (VZG) / Common Library Network
> Platz der Goettinger Sieben 1, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
> +49 (0)551 39-10242, http://www.gbv.de
>