RE: Does 'Feature' = 'Real World Thing'?

Jeremy, Andrea,

Most interesting discussion, particularly for non-geographers like me who still try to grasp what a "feature" is...

On Tuesday, October 20, 2015 6:55 PM, Andrea Perego wrote:

> > @andrea ... I think that fictional things (like Dicken's London) count as
> > 'real-world Things'. OK; that's counter intuitive :-) ... but I'm implying
> > that we _talk_ about them in the real world; they are part of the "universe
> > of discourse".
> 
> +1 from me. But then we should make it clear that *real*-world things
> do include fictional ones. Or we can opt for something else, e.g., the
> already mentioned *spatial* thing / object.

Yes, I agree that fictional things are a subclass of real-world things (or at least that we should treat them as if they were). This is also the way we model it in the DNB's authority data and the GND ontology. Hermione Granger [1] is a "Literary or Legendary Character" [2] which is a subclass of "Differentiated Person" [3] and thus a "Person". Atlantis [4] is a "Fictive Place" [5] which is a subclass of "Place or Geographic Name" (to get back to the geographic domain...).

[1] http://d-nb.info/gnd/1029449120
[2] http://d-nb.info/standards/elementset/gnd#LiteraryOrLegendaryCharacter
[3] http://d-nb.info/standards/elementset/gnd#DifferentiatedPerson
[4] http://d-nb.info/gnd/4003385-5
[5] http://d-nb.info/standards/elementset/gnd#FictivePlace
[6] http://d-nb.info/standards/elementset/gnd#PlaceOrGeographicName

Best,

Lars

Received on Wednesday, 21 October 2015 08:43:39 UTC