RE: Recommendations: URIs

Quoting "Koster, Lukas" <L.Koster@uva.nl>:

> Interesting subject. I agree with Ed that organisations should try  
> and use existing vocabularies & ontologies (by the way, can someone  
> explain the difference if there is any? thanks) first.

Vocabularies is used both for value vocabularies (the right-hand  
"object" side of the triple) and for ontologies (the middle  
"predicate"), so it is confusing. I try to say "value vocabularies"  
for the former, but it's convenient to use "vocabularies" when you  
mean both, thus continuing the general confusion :-)

>
> - URI syntax schemes: this is a general linked data issue, not a  
> library related one. Do you really want to give recommendations   
> specifically aimed at libraries for this? A nice recent article  
> about this:  
> http://blogs.talis.com/platform-consulting/2011/04/21/choosing-uris-not-a-five-minute-task/

I think that for this, as for many things, it will be efficient to  
have a "best practice" for libraries so that everyone doesn't have to  
go through the choice, and so that we have some commonality. It isn't  
really a technical issue but a community work-flow issue.

> - Which entities should libraries create URIs for? If we only  
> consider bibliographic catalogue metadata, then in my view only  
> really unique information would be worthwhile. Looking at the FRBR  
> WEMI structure, it's basically only the "I", the Items that  
> libraries own, or rather the holdings that libraries can give access  
> to (print and digital). The W, E and M parts should ideally be  
> described only once of course. Or at least as less as possible (I  
> hope this is correct English ;-) ). Yes, I know this is very  
> difficult to achieve, but I think that libraries should try to link  
> their holdings to existing trusted Work, Expression and/or  
> Manifestation instances/URIs, instead of publishing the same  
> information over and over again. This is basically the same task as  
> with Persons and Subjects: using authority files.

We have authorities for names and subjects now that we can lean on. To  
develop them for WEM would mean doing so within a metadata creation  
environment most likely. Unfortunately this kind of centralization of  
metadata creation is a huge undertaking and may not be feasible. It  
definitely is not a *starting* point, even if it is an eventual goal.  
(Also note that different communities have different definitions of  
WEM that they will follow, so there will not be one single global  
definition.) So it seems inevitable that we will go through a period  
of creation followed by consolidation.

> So, this could/should be a recommendation: try to work together as  
> much as possible. There are already shared/union cataloguing systems  
> out there, so use these. Also the new "next generation ILS" systems  
> (Ex Libris Alma, OCLC WMS, Innovative Sierra, Kuali OLE) use this  
> concept of sharing metadata. These system vendors should start  
> thinking about this as well. (I am doing my best with Ex Libris at  
> the moment).

We have debated how far we want to get into telling people HOW to get  
this all done -- should we recommend that IFLA do x? Or that national  
libraries should gather and decide y? Do we say that the entities  
responsible for various ontologies should describe them in RDF? What  
if they don't? Does the entire library world wait? I tried to find a  
way to say that we should accept RDF versions created by third parties  
rather than wait for institutions that are holding us back, but that  
seemed awkward.

There are a lot of problems getting the library world to move forward,  
as we all know. There are also significant differences between  
countries on everything from the legal position of the national  
libraries to questions of rights over metadata. This makes it hard for  
us to address these in our recommendations, and we have shied away  
from this aspect. However, I do think we could encourage international  
cooperation in spirit if that is a message the group would like to send.

kc

>
> Lukas Koster
> Library Systems Coordinator
> Library and Information Systems Department
> Library of the University of Amsterdam
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-lld-request@w3.org [mailto:public-lld-request@w3.org]  
> On Behalf Of Ed Summers
> Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2011 3:28 AM
> To: Karen Coyle
> Cc: public-lld@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Recommendations: URIs
>
> On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 8:04 PM, Karen Coyle <kcoyle@kcoyle.net> wrote:
>> Thanks for the comment. It seems to me that you are making a
>> distinction between ontologies (and value vocabularies) and instance
>> data -- do I have that right? And that we should emphasize creating
>> URIs for ontologies FIRST, with URIs for instance data having a  
>> second priority.
>
> Personally, I don't think we should recommend that cultural heritage  
> organizations start out with Linked Data by creating ontologies  
> first...much the opposite actually. I think the report should  
> encourage the use of existing vocabularies & ontologies to publish  
> some of their unique data sets, and learn what the gaps and  
> discontinuities are first before creating new ontologies.
>
> It is already the case that the number of URIs for "instance data"  
> in the Library Linked Data space far exceeds the number for  
> vocabulary terms (ontologies).  As such I think it deserves the most  
> emphasis. I think your section about "Develop policies for  
> namespaces" nicely captures some of the issues related to both  
> publishing scenarios.
> However, the section on registries seems less relevant for instance data.
>
> //Ed
>
>
>



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

Received on Wednesday, 27 April 2011 15:11:52 UTC