Re: SemWeb terminology page

The term "vocabularies" gets used for a lot of different things in  
semantic web discussions. However, as this thread shows, there isn't  
an obvious set of clear terms to use in its place.

Depending on who you are talking to, the things that DCMI calls "value  
vocabularies" are "controlled lists of terms" or "authority lists" or  
"pick lists." Although 'value vocabulary' is a clear distinction to  
adherents of DCAM, I have not heard that phrase used by any other  
communities. When I talk to librarians, I often use the phrase  
"controlled list" in my explanation. It would be good to get the  
'value vocabulary' concept disseminated broadly.

The analogy to properties is "data elements" in the traditional IT  
world. In fact, the MARC documentation refers to the fields and  
subfields as data elements. For that reason, "metadata element" and  
"metadata element set" seem to resonate with folks who are already  
somewhat familiar with a data processing model. However, I worry that  
people will assume that a property is the same as a data element.

The terms "property," "value" and "statement" have no meaning for  
folks in the library world. These are new concepts, and should be  
introduced as representing a new way of creating and using metadata. I  
think it is legitimate to say that MARC does not have properties (in  
the semweb sense), and there are no statements in a MARC record as it  
is coded today. The advantage here is that librarians can move to new  
concepts and a new vocabulary about those concepts, which I think will  
help keep them from dragging the old ideas along with them into the  
semantic web.

Therefore (after all of that), I would vote for using 'value  
vocabularies' and 'properties' ('set of properties' for something like  
foaf or dcterms?), but explain them in terms of controlled lists and  
data elements, emphasizing the differences.

Yep, easier said than done.

kc

Quoting Mark van Assem <mark@cs.vu.nl>:

>
>> Generally the whole situation is a mess, and can only be understood
>> sociologically / historically. Asking whether eg. 'schemas' and
>> 'ontologies' are the same or different doesn't get us very far. Asking
>> about which communities used which terms maybe gets us a bit
>> further...
>
> Ok, If the question is about communities we're communicating with, then
>
>   "element set" would probably work here
>
> (come to think of it, I used "metadata element set" to refer to DC etc.
> in my thesis, and later link that to the term "schemas" to denote how
> DC looks like in RDF, which then become "metadata element schemas"
>
>
> I also like "value vocabulary" because it sort of indicates that they
> go into the object part ("value") of a triple.
>
>> I quite like 'vocabulary' as it covers schema, ontology, metadata set,
>> and also SKOS/thesaurus stuff too.
>
> Yes, but we need separate terms for the things "vocabulary" may
> encompass. In other words it's either too broad or means different
> things to different people.
>
> Mark
>
> -- 
>  Mark van Assem - Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
>            http://www.cs.vu.nl/~mark



-- 
Karen Coyle
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet

Received on Tuesday, 2 November 2010 15:50:25 UTC