Re: vocabs, metadata set, datasets

Tom
 
Re your last suggestion about discussing/describing the "record" concept in
Libraryland (it is not the same in Archiveland, or to a certain extent in
Museumland):
 
I touched on this during the discussion on the Collections cluster, which is
"about" the granularity of metadata focus as well asobtaining specific items.
Briefly, granularity of focus covers super-collection > collection > record >
record component (WEMI) > statement. RDF/Linked data provides a technical
framework for this last, lowest level of the metadata statement; although it has
always been part of library thinking (RDA focuses on the statement, not the
record), the technical environment has usually only supported the record as unit
of processing/granularity. Also, collection-level description at higher levels
has been generally neglected in Libraryland, probably because it mainly benefits
supra-institutional retrieval systems.
 
I hinted during the discussion that a separate wiki page on the topic of
granularity, linked to the Collections cluster, might be useful. I was also
thinking of the BibData cluster, where the background section attempts to raise
the issue of moving from record to statement. So I was intending to put together
such a wiki page, which could also be linked to the Library Terminology page. Of
course I agree with you that this is a crucial issue (probably the most
important single strategic issues for library linked data), and it's more than
just a terminology issue.
 
So I'm happy to start a draft wiki page on metadata granularity which can be
linked appropriately to other outputs like clusters and terminologies. Is this
ok with everyone?
 
Cheers
 
Gordon


 

On 12 January 2011 at 03:55 Thomas Baker <tbaker@tbaker.de> wrote:

> A few general comments re: our categories [1]:
>
> -- I'd like for us to say more explicitly, up-front,
>    that we are referring to things by these three handles --
>    Dataset, Metadata Element Set, and Value Vocabulary -- based
>    on their typical usage. And that as these things can be used
>    in ways other than their "typical" usage, the categories are
>    not, as Mark already puts it, "airtight".  As Mikael put
>    it, the three handles are "not mainly used to categorize
>    vocabularies but rather to analyze how vocabularies are
>    used and combined in metadata application profiles".
>
> -- I'm wondering if Dataset is simply a superset of Metadata
>    Element Set and Value Vocabulary -- i.e., anything we
>    typically think of as an MES or VV, when used in a metadata
>    context for anything other than as a source of "elements"
>    or "values" for a "record" (or "application profile"),
>    would fall under the definition of Dataset.  Can anyone
>    think of counter-examples?
>
> -- I'm slightly bothered by the emphasis -- particularly (but not
>    only) in the definition of Dataset -- on the notion of a
>    "structured metadata record".  By this criterion, I'm
>    guessing that many of the nodes in the Linked Open Data
>    cloud would not qualify as Datasets simply because the
>    data, while possibly derived from records, does not, when
>    expressed as triples, consist explicitly of "records".
>
> -- I'm thinking that the Library Terminology page might
>    therefore include an entry on records, citing some of the
>    key definitions of "record" used in library science.  That
>    entry could be the place where the notion that a record is
>    "basically a collection of statements about ... one entity"
>    is called into question (by pointing out that in practice, records
>    typically include some description about several entities).
>    It could also provide a place to discuss the notion that
>    descriptive metadata, in a Linked Data context, is primarily
>    about description at the statement level, which is indeed
>    what lends it so well to linking and recombination.  That
>    entry could acknowledge the role of records in traditional
>    library science of providing a context for the provenance of
>    metadata and perhaps flag this as a crucial issue for Linked
>    Data (and RDF generally).
>
> Tom
>
> [1]
> http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/wiki/Library_terminology_informally_explained#Vocabularies.2C_Element_sets.2C_Datasets
> [2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-lld/2010Dec/0023.html
>
> --
> Thomas Baker <tbaker@tbaker.de>
>
>