Re: [MODS] Mark Twain Rides Again (was Re: [MODS] MADS/RDF for review)

Hi Simon,

I'll be quick, as I've not so much though about it--probably the owners of FOAF and VIAF have more insight...
I'd say that for (1) (2) and (3) there's nothing against creating 3 instances of foaf:Person, and connecting the mads:Authorities (or skos:Concepts directly, in the VIAF approach) to them using foaf:focus.

Now comes the issue of gluing the foaf:Persons together. We're still missing a standard co-reference mapping link (softer than owl:sameAs) for this; perhaps umbel:isLike [1] can be used.
I'd be much more confident about expressing the relation at the level of mads:Authorities/skos:Concepts, using skos:exactMatch -- or skos:closeMatch, depending on your feelings (or AACR2's) regarding ghosts :-)

Antoine

[1] http://www.umbel.org/vocabulary#isLike%20Property


> [Antoine - I'm adding public-lld to the cc list for this message, since there was some discussion dealing with linking VIAF records to real-world-objects].
>
> It's interesting to consider the relationship between:
>
> *(1) Twain, Mark, 1835-1910 *
> LCCN: n 79021164
> VIAF rdf: http://viaf.org/viaf/50566653/rdf.xml
>
> *(2) Clemens, Samuel Langhorne, 1835-1910 *
> LCCN: n 93099439
> VIAF rdf: http://viaf.org/viaf/53367783/rdf.xml
>
> *(3) Twain, Mark, 1835-1910 (Spirit)*
> LCCN: n 82045653
> VIAF rdf: http://viaf.org/viaf/106965116/rdf.xml
>
> [Since VIAF make use of UMBEL, I will use UMBEL/Cyc as a reference]
>
>    1. All three of these Thing <http://sw.opencyc.org/concept/Mx4rvViA9JwpEbGdrcN5Y29ycA> can be used to make assertions/claims about the Literary Identity of the creator of a ConceptualWork <http://sw.opencyc.org/concept/Mx4rwClAZJwpEbGdrcN5Y29ycA>.
>    2. Assertions of authorship made using the three different Things state different propositions.
>    3. (1) and (2) both correspond to names used by the same MaieHuman <http://sw.opencyc.org/concept/Mx4rvVjWoZwpEbGdrcN5Y29ycA>, they represent distinct Literary identities. Authorship attributions using (1) and (2) represent claims that the creation of the intellectual content of the work and the creation of the first tangible form of the work were both done by that MaleHuman <http://sw.opencyc.org/concept/Mx4rvVjWoZwpEbGdrcN5Y29ycA>.
>    4. Authorship attributions using (1) and (3) represent claims that that the intellectual content of the work was produced by the same MaleHuman <http://sw.opencyc.org/concept/Mx4rvVjWoZwpEbGdrcN5Y29ycA> as in (1) and (2), but that the creation took place after his death, and that a different person created the first tangible form of the work. This person is given as an added entry.
>    5. Statements made using (3) are not believed to be true in consensual reality.
>    6. There is a specific rule for this is in the AACR 2. I am not making this up :-)
>    7. FOAF allows for non-existing Persons, so ghosts can be foaf:Person. This allows Fictional characters and non Christian deities to be represented as "Names" not "Subjects".
>    8. FOAF does not specifically allow for non-existent Corporate bodies or Groups. This requires fictional entities of this type to be handled separately (Ministry of Magic; Miskatonic University; etc.)
>
> Simon
>
> On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 5:46 AM, Antoine Isaac <aisaac@few.vu.nl <mailto:aisaac@few.vu.nl>> wrote:
>
>     Hello Bruce,
>
>     Would it alleviate your concern if you could use something like foaf:focus [1] to link instances of mads:Authority to instances of foaf:Person?
>     This is what VIAF does (e.g., [2]), and there's nothing in the the current design of MADS/RDF that forbids it, since mads:Authority is a sub-class of skos:Concept.
>
>     Best,
>
>     Antoine
>
>     [1] http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/#term_focus
>     [2] http://viaf.org/viaf/24604287/rdf.xml
>
>
>
>         I've been away from this since my flaming away. Just wanted to chime
>         in on Rob's points ...
>
>         On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 3:56 AM, Rob Styles<rob.styles@talis.com <mailto:rob.styles@talis.com>> wrote:
>
>             Hi all, my 2 pence worth...
>
>             Not a regular here, joining you specifically for the MADS/RDF discussion.
>
>             ** Comments so far
>             Some of the comments so far are a tad harsh. It's great to see LoC
>             doing this stuff even if it's not exactly as one might have approached
>             it. They know their data, maybe we should try to be a bit more
>             supportive?
>
>
>         Fair enough. But I do think we need to meet each other half way
>         ("their data" is also "our data" in my view), and I think your
>         comments are helpful (definitely more than mine) towards that end.
>
>             ** Conceptual approach
>             I've worked with library data for a long time and it's not simple
>             stuff. A common first mistake is often to assume that something like
>             the name authority talks about people and organisations when in fact
>             it talks about "bibliographic entities" — the names printed in books,
>             mostly.
>
>
>         Yes, I get this sort of indirection. But as an author of some of those
>         bibliographic items, I'm still a person. And there needs to be a way
>         to bring these two perspectives together. Concretely, if I have a
>         description of Samuel Clemens in FOAF, I really want to know how to
>         link that to some description of his pen persona/alter ego Mark Twain.
>
>             These have been modelled and re-modelled over many years and authority
>             data has evolved to meet specific needs. It is not an ideal starting
>             point for publishing Linked Data.
>
>             However, I think authority data could be approached differently to
>             MADS/RDF. Where MADS/RDF uses bibliographic terms, many of which come
>             from the record structures employed, I would prefer to see real-world
>             terminology used. So, a class of "Name" would be a good thing to have,
>             then we can talk about names. Where it is possible to identify a real
>             person it would be good to use a class of Person (ideally the foaf
>             one) and where we know the name is a pseudonym it would be great to
>             have a Pseudonym class too. The current MADS/RDF approach remodels the
>             authority /record/ where it may be preferable to model the authority
>             /data/.
>
>
>         To me, this (natural language terms, rather than jargon) would go a
>         long way towards resolving some of my impulsive reaction against what
>         I was seeing.
>
>             The downside to that approach is that it can make round-tripping
>             between the syntaxes harder. Consider round-tripping MARC and MARC/XML
>             as compared with MARC and Dublin-Core XML?
>
>
>         So this really comes down to what the priorities are for this effort?
>         Is it absolutely clean round-tripping with legacy data, or is it to
>         bring library data into the linked data world? Obviously one can try
>         to do both, but there's some clear tension here.
>
>             I would look again at anywhere you have a structure word such as
>             /element/, /list/ or value as they are likely to be describing a
>             record rather than describing things from the world.
>
>
>         Right.
>
>         I guess in the end, I'd really like the designers behind this effort
>         to imagine that people other than library people might also want to
>         use these data in the end, and to imagine how that might work.
>
>         Imagine a case where some developer somewhere is writing some simple
>         PHP application and wants to store some bibliographic data, but also
>         wants to be able to link into some LoC SPARQL endpoint to enhance it.
>         How would they do that? How would they know how to get what kinds of
>         data, to present it how to their users?
>
>         Right now, MADS RDF seems to me to be only intelligible to someone
>         with a library degree, or with an awful lot of free time on their
>         hands.
>
>         And I agree, BTW, with Karen's suggestion that it makes sense to treat
>         MADS (or insert other library representation) name representations (I
>         don't, personas?) as distinct from foaf:Agent or foaf:Person, but to
>         enable them to be linked.
>
>         [snip]
>
>         Bruce
>
>

Received on Monday, 3 January 2011 12:57:30 UTC