Re: Linked Library Holdings/Items

Karen Coyle wrote:

> It might be simpler, since your interest is in holdings, to create a
> non-FRBR item/holdings entity. This entity could include links to
> institutions along with the usual item identifiers (call numbers, bar
> codes, and such).

I think items/holdings are not the problem. I just dropped my own class 
daia:Item on favour of frbr:Item because the difference is not worth the 
trouble of yet another entity. Links to institutions are established 
with <http://purl.org/ontology/daia/heldBy> and call numbers with 
<http://purl.org/ontology/daia/label>.

> What we then need is a good file of institution authority data with
> identifiers, locations, and contact information.

There already is such an international authority file with the 
International Standard Identifier for Libraries and Related 
Organizations. Unfortunately the ISIL agency defined no URI prefix, so 
people start to create their own URIs based on ISIL:

http://lobid.org/organisation/DE-7
http://uri.gbv.de/organization/isil/DE-7

As lobid.org was the first, I'd always add a link to it with owl:sameAs. 
For institutions below ISIL level the institutions should better define 
their own URIs because organizations are very special. I spent the last 
week finding a definition of library departments or location, at least 
for the libraries in our union network. Depending on the use case 
(physical locations, institutional substructure etc.) the subdivisions 
are different. The current solution in DAIA is (as depicted at 
http://www.gbv.de/wikis/cls/DAIA#DAIA_model_as_graph):

* Libraries are instances of foaf:Organization
* Holdings are instances of frbr:Item
* Places where holdings are stored are instances of daia:Storage.
* Each <http://purl.org/ontology/daia/Storage> is a geo:SpatialThing,
* frbr:Items and daia:Storages are connected via geo:Location

The Geo Positioning Ontology (geo:) seems to be widely adopted so it's 
good to build on it.

Digital Holdings have no location (you could specify the location of a 
server but this is rarely of use). Instead you can specify which 
services the library institution provides to use the digital item.

Contact information can be provided with vCard ontology. Opening hours 
still have to be discussed, see this thread:

http://answers.semanticweb.com/questions/11419/how-to-publish-opening-hours-in-rdf

Unfortunately real-world opening hours have the weirdest formats and 
exceptions (Mo-Tu 09:00-12:00 and 13:00-18:00 except every second 
Wednesday in holidays 10:00-16:00 but only room number 08/15 ...), so 
some library institutions will only have plain text opening hours.

> For that reason I am very glad that Jakob has brought up this topic -- I
> am chagrined that we did not give this topic much importance in the LLD
> report, but it could become a first project for a community group on LLD
> if we can find volunteers to lead that effort.

Well, all topics are somehow connected. With DAIA I focus on document 
availability, which is mostly realized by holdings with locations and 
holding institutions. I'd be happy to get DAIA approved by some 
institution (W3C LLD Recommendation, IETF RFC, IFLA etc.) as soon as it 
is fully adopted at least by some libraries. The most difficult task is 
to get availability data out of monolithical Integrated Library Systems.

Jakob

-- 
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 Friday, 21 October 2011 11:30:52 UTC