- From: Karen Coyle <kcoyle@kcoyle.net>
- Date: Mon, 08 Aug 2011 07:24:16 -0700
- To: public-lld@w3.org
Quoting Ross Singer <ross.singer@talis.com>: > > Like Jeff pointed out, the real wins are the shared vocabularies and > identifiers; those shouldn't be terribly controversial ideas. What, then, > about that message isn't getting to people and how can we improve that? I > think it's easy to bury the the story in lot of FUD around how we'll need > entirely new technology stacks and unproven methods of sharing data (which, > of course, is nonsense, but, certainly, the details would need to be worked > out) while if, instead, the focus was on the parts that people can > (theoretically) agree upon we at least improve the status quo and begin > priming the pump towards a better future. I agree with this. I also think that the "semantic web" and "linked data" actually get in our way at times. I'm developing some seminar materials and I am trying to stay away from those terms until long after the seminarees have had some exercises in creating statements and working with identifiers. Even without a "full-blown" semantic web, these changes could make a huge difference in how well our data works. In terms of disruption, the huge disruptions coming at us right now are FRBR, RDA and a replacement for MARC. The scary thing is that we have no idea how to implement the first two, and no guidance on what the last one should be. I see the semantic web metadata standards as one possible answer, and I'm more comfortable with ANY answer than none at all. (I would welcome a larger set of answers to choose from.) However, I don't think that the case has been made that LD is a *response* to these disruptive technologies. It seems to come from left field, and we need to do a better job of putting it in this context. I also think that a non-technical version of the Singapore Framework would be helpful. In casual conversation there is a lot of confusion between data models, data elements (properties, vocabularies), ontologies (sets of properties), and instance data. We need a clear, non-technical way to talk about these and a better understanding of the pieces we need to develop so as to have a coherent metadata environment. It's a huge education task, really. We have a profession (or a group of professions) that does not have a common understanding of a key technology. That's a huge hurdle. kc -- Karen Coyle kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net ph: 1-510-540-7596 m: 1-510-435-8234 skype: kcoylenet
Received on Monday, 8 August 2011 14:24:57 UTC