Re: vocabs, metadata set, datasets

Tom and others:


Further to the email below, I have set up a wiki page on granularity and
metadata at: 
[%20http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/wiki/Granularity_of_library_metadata]
http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/wiki/Granularity_of_library_metadata
 
This is an early, incomplete draft - all comments and suggestions welcome, or
just edit the page directly.
 
The page is currently only linked from the Collection-level description use
case.on
 
Cheers
 
Gordon
 


On 12 January 2011 at 09:02 "gordon@gordondunsire.com"
<gordon@gordondunsire.com> wrote:


> 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>
> >
> >