Re: Recommendations: URIs

On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 12:53:23PM -0700, Karen Coyle wrote:
> That's why it seems to be that it's not just that we need *URIs* for  
> our ontologies but we need the RDF semantics for them as well as the  
> URIs that will identify them. I think that bundling this under URIs  
> kind of hides the effort of creating ontologies and makes the  
> difference between ontologies and instance data less clear.
> 
> That said, I know that on some theoretical level there is not a  
> difference between ontologies and instance data. However, I think  
> there is a significant different in practice, which makes it desirable  
> to work on ontologies for properties first, as Emma says, so that the  
> instance data can be created.

I guess it depends who is supposed to be working on what.
For individual projects, I understand Emma to be saying the
opposite -- i.e., that assigning trusted URIs to "resources"
(works, places, people...) should be the first requirement
for creating a Linked Data project:

     In the Benefits section, we put strong emphasis on URIs being one of
     the main advantages of Linked Data, because URIs provide means to
     uniquely identify and link to works, places, people, events, etc.

     I think that it's not exactly the same thing to design URIs for
     metadata elements and for resources such as works, places, people,
     events, etc. For example, what would mean "assigning URIs in due time"
     when speaking about resources such as works, authors, books, documents?

     Designing persistent, trusted URIs for resources: shouldn't that be
     the first requirement for creating a Linked Data project ? Aren't
     there cases where it is better to mint local URIs for resources,
     rather than re-use existing ones ?

     So wouldn't it be useful to make a distinction between assigning &
     maintaining URIs for metadata standards, and designing URIs for a
     particular dataset

Very broadly, the "library world", along with standards
developers such as W3C, FOAF, and DCMI should work on assigning
URIs to properties and classes.  But creators of specific
Linked Data projects should be concerned first and foremost
with _creating_ URIs for their things -- the "instances" about
they want to make statements -- then re-use URIs for properties
and classes (when possible) in order to make those statements.

I think we're agreeing that "assigning URIs" is a key point
but that for the sake of readers we need to distinguish "URIs
for properties and classes" from "URIs for dataset items
(instances)".

Tom

-- 
Tom Baker <tbaker@tbaker.de>

Received on Wednesday, 27 April 2011 20:24:49 UTC