Re: Draft report and use cases

Hi all,

Coming back after a week of vacations, it took me a while to ingest
all the interesting discussions you've had meanwhile...
I'll answer on the "brainstorming" mail too, but first I wanted to
make a point on use cases.

IMHO, the main interest of the UC approach is that they are focused on
the WHY and not the HOW : WHY it is interesting to use Linked Data in
Libraries, not HOW to do it.
Hence, they necessarily provide an incomplete view on our group's
issues : for instance, the legacy data issue (which is only *one*
issue, not necessarily the main one, in my opinion) is more about HOW
to do it, and it's somewhat logical that we don't see that explained
in much detail in the use cases.

Still, we strongly need the UC to demonstrate the importance of a LD
approch to library data, to build the rationale. One of our issues is
probably to demonstrate why LD is relevant to libraries, more relevant
than another technology, relevant enough to justify that we engage in
a shift that will challenge existing data, systems and services (not
even talking about financing this shift ;-).
We need to advocate the benefits. The UC have an illustrative
function, very much in the "taste" of W3C. They are supposed to
provide scenarios which everyone can understand. They are part of the
"elevator speech" : can you tell me 2 or 3 stories that illustrate why
LD is relevant to library data ? or why it is critical for libraries
to adopt LD today ?
Those elevator stories lie somewhere in our UC effort...

Maybe we should select only some of our UC, not all of them, the more
striking ones. I like the cluster approach because we end up with a
series of different perspectives, and all of them are relevant, but
maybe it's still too much and we have to choose.
AND/OR - Marcia's idea of a specific UC oriented deliverable is good,
and we can take them out of the final report, except 1 or 2 that we
would keep for demonstration purposes and as a pointer to the UC
report. Creating such a UC report would probably need some editing
work on the clusters, but we have a good starting point.

As I authored the first very early draft of the report, I can explain
what I had (roughly) in mind :
1/ WHY use LD in libraries -> illustrated by use cases
2/ WHAT is done already -> vocabularies, available datasets
3/ HOW to do it -> recommendations
Of course this early structure is only here to be challenged and
discussed  (e.g. addition of a "problems & limitations" section is a
great idea).

Emmanuelle

On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 1:39 PM, Jodi Schneider <jodi.schneider@deri.org> wrote:
> On 18 Feb 2011, at 09:04, Antoine Isaac wrote:
>> When I've mentioned "report" recently, I had quite a broad vision of it--a document that could including several appendices which could be more-or-less independent documents. Perhaps it's just clearer to drop any use of the word "appendix". And adopt the view that all material that it too big/detailed or even partial, will physically go into separate "deliverables"--for which the core report should provide a reading guide. Such an organization was in fact hinted in the charter [1].
>
> I like the idea of separate, more-or-less independent documents. This addresses the tension between producing a readable report and documenting our process. Meanwhile, it allows us to make full use of what we have gathered, while making it obvious that we have different products, which may be relevant to different audiences.
>
> I think the appendix should be
> - integral to the report (in terms of content)
> - in a separate section at the end (in terms of location)
>
> I think a reading guide could be a good appendix -- then the report would be "complete" in the sense that it lists everything we have produced. Then the related documents (use case clusters, but also the vocabularies, and the CKAN datasets) could be accessible from the report but not "integral" to and "part of" it.
>
>>
>> This includes the set of use case clusters, but also the vocabularies, and the CKAN datasets, at least. Even though these are just a snapshot (at least when the group has to disband--
>
>> I hope the CKAN group will live on!), they can be useful to our community.
>
> I agree! :)
>
>> See the discussion we had on the LOD-LAM summit yesterday, and the comments around the JISC RDTF metadata guidelines Monica circulated last week, or the JISC use cases.
>
>
>> People are asking for use cases, people are asking for pointers to vocabularies and datasets.
>
> Use cases will certainly be valuable for others! And vocabularies and datasets are essential.
>
> At the same time, I understand (and agree with) Karen's point: the largest part of library data is held in catalogs, and we must emphasize that as one major application area. With RDA on the doorstep, this is a good moment to attend to the data, and argue for Linked Data.
>
> I think that the multiplicity of use cases doesn't detract from the importance of this one; but I suspect that our different ideas about what to do with use cases (and how much time to spend on them) are due to differences on that point -- whether the largest uses may get lost in the multiplicity and variation.
>
> -Jodi
>
>> I agree that our current focus may be on something else now, but we must not drop that valuable material at the last moment!
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Antoine
>>
>> [1] http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/charter#deliverables
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>

Received on Tuesday, 22 February 2011 09:10:57 UTC