Re: Non- and Partial-FRBR Metadata

On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 11:28 AM, Young,Jeff (OR) <jyoung@oclc.org> wrote:
> The counter argument is that the dcterms:hasVersion/isVersionOf solution
> isn't documented anywhere and other solutions are plausible. Without a
> systematic connection, SPARQL connections between Work and Manifestation
> become a guessing game.
>
You'll notice that in my example I didn't use
dcterms:hasVersion/isVersionOf, but rather rda:workManifested (which,
actually, looking more closely at it, doesn't seem right either: "A
work embodied in a manifestation." with no range -- implying a
literal?).  My point actually isn't either of those, it just is making
the point that a direct relationship between M and W is useful, simple
and eliminates a lot of hand waving and teeth gnashing with no
discernible downside.

And while, no, dcterms:hasVersion/isVersionOf isn't documented
anywhere, if this group saw it as useful (or any other combination of
inverse relationships, including something new) it could document,
recommend and endorse it.  Then your semantics are there.  There is
practically zero RDF/FRBR/RDA data to draw upon presently - I don't
see the point in stubbornly sticking to the letter of a model that is
currently unproven, unused and doesn't deal well with our hundreds of
millions of legacy records.  Is the FRBR model so immutable that it
cannot exist with the addition of a direct relationship between W and
M?  If it eases the transition of the old into the new and reduces
costs, wouldn't that generally be considered beneficial?

> The question is, how much grief will the RDF designer get for wanting to
> coin a new 303 URI? If the framework is flexible, then go ahead and have
> them coin a 303 URI for Expression:
>
> http://example.org/expression/45678 a frbr:Expression .
>
> My suggestion of using a hash assumes that Expression will always be a
> twin to Work and is easily piggybacked on it without fighting for
> infrastructure support. If and when Expressions deserve 303 URIs, the
> old hash URIs can migrate to the 303 URI using owl:sameAs.
>
Unless assertions are applied to the Fauxpression and then you get
into reconciliation, which is expensive and most likely requires human
intervention.

If the Fauxpression is, indeed, just a placeholder that we aren't
expecting to add any assertions to -- again, I ask, what's the point?
Just to make things more complicated?

I guess it's just not clear to me what is lost with a three-way
relationship between W,E and M that requires this
Expression-as-sole-gatekeeper between Work and Manifestation (which,
given our historical data -- and the historical record on the
interpretation of 'what is an Expression?' -- is going to be nothing
but problematic).

My personal opinion is that any RDF representation of FRBR, owing to
RDF's open world assumption, should be able to account for any entity
being missing from the initial point of modeling -- if all you "know"
about is the Item and the Work (or Expression or whatever), then we
should be able to go with that and patch in the blank holes later.

-Ross.

Received on Wednesday, 15 September 2010 16:05:54 UTC