Re: Organizations changing status

On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 12:17 PM, William Waites <william.waites@okfn.org> wrote:
> On 10-06-07 23:03, Emmanouil Batsis (Manos) wrote:
>
>> b) what happens when organizations change legal status?
>
> I'm not certain but I don't think this ever really
> happens. In practice the old organisation ceases to
> exist and a new one comes into being possibly with
> a period of overlap. They may share the same name
> and informally be referred to as the same but
> technically they are different organisations.
>
> I think this suggests two predicates that are not
> present in the ontology -- org:successor and
> org:predecessor

Here's a nice practical example: the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative.

http://purl.org/dc/aboutdcmi ->
http://dublincore.org/DCMI.rdf

<rdf:RDF
    xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
    xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#"
    xmlns:dct="http://purl.org/dc/terms/"
    xmlns:foaf="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/" >
    <foaf:Organization rdf:about="http://purl.org/dc/aboutdcmi#DCMI">
       <foaf:name>Dublin Core Metadata Initiative</foaf:name>
       <foaf:nick>DCMI</foaf:nick>
       <foaf:homepage rdf:resource="http://dublincore.org/" />
       <rdfs:seeAlso rdf:resource="http://purl.org/dc/aboutdcmi" />
       <dct:description>The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative is an open
forum engaged in the development of interoperable online metadata
standards that support a broad range of purposes and business models.
DCMI's activities include consensus-driven working groups, global
conferences and workshops, standards liaison, and educational efforts
to promote widespread acceptance of metadata standards and
practices.</dct:description>
       <dct:created>1995-01-03</dct:created>
       <dct:subject
rdf:resource="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/sh96000740#concept"/>
       <dct:subject
rdf:resource="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/sh98002267#concept"/>
    </foaf:Organization>
</rdf:RDF>

There was a little discussion on this point: when was the Dublin Core
created as an organization? It began in 1995 but as an informal
internet-mediated community. In recent years this has increasingly
solidified until now there is a legal entity;
http://dublincore.org/about-us/  "The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
(DCMI) is an open organization, incorporated in Singapore as a public,
not-for-profit Company limited by Guarantee (registration number
200823602C), engaged in the development of interoperable metadata
standards that support a broad range of purposes and business models."

RDF doesn't natively handle the representation of changes over time.
In some contexts we'll want to talk as if there is a single thing that
existed since 1995. In some other contexts we'll want to be precise,
and talk of the legal entity in Singapore. RDF has the basics to allow
this kind of separation and folding together of perspectives, but in
everyday practice we don't yet do it very well, to be honest. I'd be
interested to see proposals for refining the Dublin Core's
self-description to include a more detailed picture using the Org:
vocab...

cheers,

Dan

Received on Tuesday, 8 June 2010 10:39:52 UTC