Re: Brainstorming: Key Issues

Some general comments here.
Let's review the charter regarding the proposed deliverables: (Number added by me.)

As a W3C Incubator group, our primary responsibility is to produce a final report presenting the landscape of Linked data development in the library domain and related sectors, and propose a way forward for these communities to participate productively in further W3C standardization actions.

Also, a number of other deliverables may be produced by the Incubator Group, although this work may also be subsumed into the final report, including :

1. A use-case document that describes a number of real-world use cases, case studies, outreach and dissemination initiatives targeted to the library community and related sectors

3  A document that describes relevant technology pieces, including vocabularies and ontologies (e.g., SKOS), with the intended goal to identify extension or interoperability requirements, and help determine what other standards may be needed."[1]

In the Wiki there was another 'requirement' piece added:
2. "express requirements to approach library environments to the Semantic Web" [2]

My suggestions:
A.  One of the report pieces that we can work on is still the use cases.  Reasons:

 *   I believe that the XG has done so far for the use cases and the analyses would lead to a good report that go well with the #1 suggested deliverable, not matter whether it will be a part of the overall report or be an appendix.  It can be written in different ways to fit the final report.


 *   Even though the library legacy data (especially MARC- , UNIMARC- , and ISBD-based data) may have not got a good use case, there are ready cases of national libraries that case studies can be analyzed and summarized.  Maybe this ought to results in a Working Group for the next step.
 *   This use case (treat as a whole or with sub- use cases) form one typical area.


 *   The LLD-XG use cases and clusters have covered MANY MORE areas which are all important and critical to the whole LIS fields and information professionals.


 *   I strongly agree with Antoine that "I agree that our current focus may be on something else now, but we must not drop that valuable material at the last moment!"

B.  Suggest to generate a "Key Issues" summarization from the use case clusters' 'Problems and limitations" section ASAP.  Reasons:

 *   What has been discussed now on the 'Brainstorming-key issues', especially what Tom added here, are key issues.
 *   However they look familiar in some of our 'Problems and limitations" section.[3]    (And we have more there even though it was limited to the Voc cluster.)
 *   If a more generalized chapter is created from those sections in the cluster, we may have a better 'Brainstorming-key issues' discussion based on the summarization.  Otherwise we may spend weeks to create redundant works.
 *   This summarization still aligns with what Tom proposed last week,[4] in terms of the divided tasks assignment.  This will allow us to best use the manpower of the whole group and the limited time of the XG.

C. These two pieces would be parts of the whole report. There could be other pieces addressing different issues.  They can be prepared by those who can demonstrate the needs to have that piece and would be willing to draft that piece.  Having more contents as a pool for the final report is better than having less.  (It reminds me about how many names Thomas Edison's lab had had for that 'phonography' thing before the best one was selected.)

Marcia

[1]  http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/charter#deliverables
[2] http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/wiki/Main_Page#Deliverables
[3] http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/wiki/Cluster_VocAlign#Problems_and_limitations
[4] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-xg-lld/2011Feb/0035.html
[5] The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World. P.31-32. (If search 'omphlegraph' it can directly point to the page by a Google Book search.)


On 2/21/11 11:42 AM, "Thomas Baker" <tbaker@tbaker.de> wrote:

On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 09:26:45AM -0800, Karen Coyle wrote:
> You can comment on these and/or post your own. Don't think about it
> too hard -- let's get as many issues on the table as we can! (I did 5
> - you can do any number you wish.)

Some more:

1. Persistence of resolvable URIs.  In the short term, Linked
   Data facilitates mash-ups, but for the long term, the use
   of RDF and URIs holds out the possibility of preserving
   the meaning of content in a way that will remain accessible
   twenty years from now -- provided that the URIs on which
   it is based are not sold, re-purposed, or simply forgotten
   and remain resolvable to machine-readable documentation.
   For libraries, this implies not just preservation policies
   for locally owned URIs and associated content, but an
   active voice, as a community, in the long-term governance
   of the global Web's Domain Name System.

2. Provenance of triples.  In Linked Data, statements may be
   merged from many sources, creating a graph the statements
   of which may no longer be traceable to those sources.
   This problem can be solved in pragmatic, non-standard ways,
   but as institutions which historically were created
   to make citations resolvable, libraries have a stake in
   supporting the standardization of graph identification [1].
   One very practical related problem is that which MacKenzie
   Smith has called "attribution stacking" -- how to credit the
   one hundred creators of a graph created from the merger
   of one hundred sources [2].  MacKenzie Smith refers
   to Provenance as one of the "three Ps of Linked Data",
   the other two being Persistence (see #1 above) and Policy
   (Karen's point #4 [3]).

   [1] http://www.w3.org/2011/rdf-wg/wiki/TF-Graphs
   [2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSmG1-hoZfE&t=43m43s
   [3] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-xg-lld/2011Feb/0044.html

3. Preservation of vocabularies.  We can be reasonably certain
   that the Library of Congress will be around twenty
   years from now, so the persistence of http://id.loc.gov
   seems secure, though history shows that ultimately no
   institution is too big to fail.  At the other extreme,
   useful vocabularies may be created by sponsored projects
   with a known expiration date.  How can memory organizations,
   including libraries, better collaborate to ensure that
   ownership and responsibility for persistence of access
   (and possibly for ongoing maintenance duties) devolves
   over time to institutions committed to their preservation?

4. When to coin new terms, when to re-use, and how to align.

Come on, everyone - let's bash out some more ideas...!

Tom

--
Tom Baker <tbaker@tbaker.de>