a Simplified Ontology for Bibliographic Resources (SOBR)

Tim Hodson wrote:

 > If the BL uses a vocabulary that imposes restrictions on how the term
 > is used those restrictions might mean that linking to outside sources
 > becomes more difficult, as the scheme definition starts to imply
 > things about the data that are not meant.
 >
 > Much better is to start simply with the easy things to describe, but
 > model the domain in a way that is extensible.

I fully agree. That's one reason why FRBR in RDF has not really started 
yet: the current constraints make it difficult to reuse only parts of 
FRBR. In particular we need general documents or works (as unspecified 
as bibo:Book, and dct:BibliographicResource), single copies or holdings, 
and particular editions. I drafted a lightweight ontology for
this purpose:

https://gist.github.com/1331983

> So if some organisation interested in the works of Jane Austen
> decides to produce a description of all her works as linked data,
> then there is a good chance there will be a uri for a single work.
> That uri would almost certainly not be described using any
> recognisably frbrish vocabulary.

I searched for Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" in BL and found dozen 
of URIs for it. Some are connected with owl:sameAs, but most
have a particular number of pages and other properties like ISBN.
For instance

@prefix blt: <http://data.bl.uk/schema/bibliographic#> .

<http://bnb.data.bl.uk/id/resource/009011483>
   a bibo:Book, dct:BibliographicResource ;
   dct:title "Pride and Prejudice" ;
   dct:creator <http://bnb.data.bl.uk/id/person/AustenJane1775-1817> ;
   dct:extend: "309p"@en .

This could either be a physical book, or an edition, or both, but it 
would be against common knowledge to say that it is the same as the , so 
they unlikely represent the general work "Pride and Prejudice". For the 
latter we already have some URIs:

<http://www.librarything.com/work/2773690> a bibo:Book ;
   owl:sameAs <http://dbpedia.org/resource/Pride_and_Prejudice> .

Someone else may have an URI for its single physical copy:

<http://example.org/mybooks/Pride_and_Prejudice> a bibo:Book ;
   dct:extend: "309p"@en . # let's assume it's the same edition

For many applications we do not need to distinguish the three, but

<http://www.librarything.com/work/2773690>
   owl:sameAs
     <http://bnb.data.bl.uk/id/resource/009011483> ,
     <http://example.org/mybooks/Pride_and_Prejudice> .

Is obviously wrong, isn't it? But how can you connect them?
How about (if BL URIs reference at least single editions):

<http://bnb.data.bl.uk/id/resource/009011483>
   sobr:editionOf
     <http://www.librarything.com/work/2773690> ;
   sobr:exemplar
     <http://example.org/mybooks/Pride_and_Prejudice> .

Cheers,
Jakob

P.S: This is the core of Simplified Ontology for Bibliographic Resources 
(SOBR): Three non-disjoint classes:

sobr:Document a owl:Class ; owl:equivalentClass
     schema:CreativeWork, bibo:Document, foaf:Document, frbr:Endevaour .

obr:Edition a owl:Class ; rdf:subClassOf sobr:Document ;
   owl:equivalentClass [ a owl:Class;
     owl:unionOf (frbr:Expression frbr:Manifestation)
   ] .

sobr:Item a owl:Class ; rdf:subClassOf sobr:Document ;
   owl:equivalentClass frbr:Item .

-- 
Jakob Voß <jakob.voss@gbv.de>, skype: nichtich
Verbundzentrale des GBV (VZG) / Common Library Network
Platz der Goettinger Sieben 1, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
+49 (0)551 39-10242, http://www.gbv.de

Received on Wednesday, 2 November 2011 18:26:44 UTC