Re: Planned changes to the VIAF RDF

Shouldn't we be designing fir the way the web SHOULD work, rather than trying to reflect the clumsy accretion of haphazard past practice?

Simple identities (yes, it's never that simple)
Atomic concepts. 
The complexity of reality (which, after all, evolves) is the reflected in combinatorial assertions, not in ever-growing lists of complicated compound concepts that have to be maintained (and understood by users). 

Sent from my iBed

On Apr 14, 2011, at 3:01 AM, Ross Singer <ross.singer@talis.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 1:00 PM, Tom Morris <tfmorris@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> I agree that unnecessary complexity should be avoided.  What does
>> "Tillet, Barbara--Biographies" provide that couldn't be done with
>> subject: Barbara Tillet, genre: Biography ?  Even in the card catalog
>> world, I'd argue that "Tillet, Barbara--Biographies" isn't actually a
>> narrower concept than the subject "Tillet, Barbara" but rather a
>> combination of two orthogonal facets.  They're grouped together to
>> make for convenient collation and browsing, not because it makes any
>> kind of ontological sense.
> 
> Fair enough, using genre/form was a bad example.
> 
> However, there are plenty of names that have topical subdivisions:
> 
> Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Authorship--Marlowe theory
> 
> For a completely non-comprehensive list in LCSH, take a look at the
> personal names with a general subdivision:
> 
> http://api.talis.com/stores/lcsh-info/services/sparql?query=PREFIX+skos%3A+%3Chttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2004%2F02%2Fskos%2Fcore%23%3E%0D%0APREFIX+lcsh%3A+%3Chttp%3A%2F%2FLCSubjects.org%2Fvocab%2F1%23%3E%0D%0ADESCRIBE+%3Fs%0D%0AWHERE+{%0D%0A%3Fs+skos%3AinScheme+%3Chttp%3A%2F%2Flcsubjects.org%2Fschemes%2FpersonalNames%3E+%3B%0D%0Alcsh%3AgeneralSubdivision+%3Fo+.%0D%0A}%0D%0ALIMIT+40
> 
> PREFIX skos: <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#>
> PREFIX lcsh: <http://LCSubjects.org/vocab/1#>
> DESCRIBE ?s
> WHERE {
> ?s skos:inScheme <http://lcsubjects.org/schemes/personalNames> ;
> lcsh:generalSubdivision ?o .
> }
> LIMIT 40
> 
> Anyway, there are lots of these and I think they get a bit more
> complicated than genre/form.
> 
> -Ross.
>

Received on Wednesday, 13 April 2011 18:52:05 UTC