Adding back the essence of the Stone Soup analogy to the Benefits section

Hi all, in the last conf call I was given an action to figure out a
way to incorporate the "essence" of the Stone Soup analogy (which was
clearly causing problems for people) into something more palatable.
The charge was to do it in a sentence -- I failed at one sentence, but
here's a paragraph I'm proposing for people to distill and wordsmith:

<current_text>
By using globally unique identifiers to designate works, places,
people, events, subjects, and other objects or concepts of interest,
memory institutions allow resources to be cited across a broad range
of data sources and thus make their metadata descriptions more richly
accessible. The Web's Domain Name System assures stability and trust
by putting these identifiers into a regulated and well-understood
ownership and maintenance context. This is fully compatible with the
long-term mandate of memory institutions. Libraries, and memory
institutions generally, are in a unique position to provide trusted
metadata for resources of long-term cultural importance as data on the
Web.
</current_text>
<added_paragraph>
Another powerful outcome of the reuse of these unique identifiers is
that it allows data providers to contribute statements about
resources, even if they only have very little to provide.  Under our
current document-based ecosystem, it is not efficient for
organizations that only know a fact or two about a given resource to
publish it; the host institution has a relatively useless metadata
record and consumers must devise ways of discovering, identifying and
integrating these statements.  In a graph-based architecture, however,
there is no downside to an organization supplying anything they can
about a resource, since all statements provided about a particular
uniquely identified resource aggregate into the global graph.  In a
linked data ecosystem, there is literally no contribution too small
and it is this attribute that makes it possible for important
connections to come from the unlikeliest of sources.
</added_paragraph>

Thanks!
-Ross.

Received on Monday, 22 August 2011 14:14:25 UTC