Re: Disjointedness of FRBR classes

On Sun, Oct 23, 2011 at 8:37 PM, Tom Baker <tbaker@tbaker.de> wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 11:40:07AM +0100, Ross Singer wrote:
>> could be applied to a frbr:Manifestation and a frbr:Expression (and,
>> probably, in some some cases, frbr:Item), and the fact that these
>> classes are disjointed with each other, a bibo:Book (or Article or
>> what have you) cannot fit well into a FRBRized worldview.
>
> Hi Ross,
>
> Please remind me who exactly is saying that the WEMI classes are formally
> disjoint.  There are several formalized expressions of FRBR in circulation.
> Which one(s) do you mean here and what is the status of that expression
> according to IFLA (or JSC, or anyone else)?  I was under the impression that
> the RDF expressions were all still just drafts, hence subject to possible
> revision...

Tom, this is a fair question, so I just revisited:

Ian Davis' "original" FRBR vocabulary is formally constrained (see:
http://vocab.org/frbr/core.rdf)

RDA's has no formal constraints whatsoever (so a resource could be a
Person, Subject, Place, Work and Item):
http://rdvocab.info/uri/schema/FRBRentitiesRDA.rdf

FRBRer (IFLA FRBR) also (despite our long debate on this list) has no
formal constraints on any of the Group 1,2 or 3 classes
(http://metadataregistry.org/schemaprop/list/schema_id/5.html).

So I stand corrected (and here we can dust off that old chestnut about
the word "assume").  There is nothing logically wrong with with saying
that a resource is both a frbr:Expression and a frbr:Manifestation.

I cannot say that I feel that this is necessarily "right", though.
Something seems ontologically wrong with the complete absence of
constraints.

-Ross.

>
>> These properties exist because FRBR is *so* rigid. ...
> ...
>> If bibo:Book or bibo:Article or dct:BibliographicResource are
>> inherently disjoint with FRBR (since they do not constrain you from
>> violating FRBR rules), the ov:commonThing properties let you express
>> FRBR relationships on these resources without making your reasoner
>> implode in a puff of logic.
>
> What an image...!! :-)  Seriously, has anyone suggested that the disjointed
> nature of these classes be re-assessed in light, say, of the principle of
> minimal semantic commitment?  Is it too late for such a discussion?
>
> Tom
>
> --
> Tom Baker <tom@tombaker.org>
>

Received on Monday, 24 October 2011 15:49:11 UTC