Re: Announcement: MADS/RDF - Final Public Review

Hi Kevin,

Apologies, this is not a full review, just a few quick thoughts. 

This looks like a great piece of work, and I think the overall
strategy is spot-on - to ground the modeling in an existing data
format (MADS/XML) and so provide a low-energy migration path for an
important corpus of extant data to the Web, whilst also mapping to
SKOS to provide the possibility for broad interoperability and
serendipitous re-use outside of the LIS domain.

A tree view of the class and property hierarchies might help give an
at-a-glance overview of the ontology.

The first paragraph of section 2.5 doesn't have hyperlinks under any
of the madsrdf:... terms, as is done elsewhere.

I wonder if it would make sense or be of any benefit to state that
madsrdf:Element is a sub-class of skosxl:Label.

I don't want to open Pandora's box, but I noticed that the example at
[1] contains the triple:

<http://id.loc.gov/authorities/sh2007010620> owl:sameAs <http://id.loc.gov/authorities/sh2007010620#concept> .

...I'm sure there's a good reason, but (and I guess this is LC's issue
and not MADS/RDF) this might deserve a bit of explanation, so
developers are clear on how to use these URIs.

I guess this is out of scope for the primer, but it would be
interesting for retrieval applications to know whether, given data
like:

<A> madsrdf:componentList (<B> <C> <D>).

...it is ever, sometimes or always reasonable to infer:

<A> skos:broader <B>, <C>, <D>.

Similarly, it would be interesting to know whether, given data like:

<A> madsrdf:componentList (<B> <C> <D>).
<X> dc:subject <A>.

...it is ever, sometimes or always reasonable to infer:

<X> dc:subject <B>, <C>, <D>.

Cheers, hope that's useful,

Alistair

[1] http://www.loc.gov/standards/mads/rdf/v1/examples/sh2007010620.ttl

On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 10:41:54AM -0400, Ford, Kevin wrote:
> Announcement: MADS/RDF - Final Public Review
> 
> The Library of Congress Network Development and MARC Standards Office would like announce a final public review period - until 8 April 2011 - for a revised MADS/RDF ontology.  Changes in the present version of the MADS/RDF ontology are the result of community feedback and collaboration from the first call for review.
> 
> The MADS/RDF (Metadata Authority Description Schema in RDF) is designed as a data model for authority and vocabulary data used within the library and information science (LIS) community, which is inclusive of museums, archives, and other cultural institutions.  It is intended to be used for controlled values for names (personal, corporate, geographic, etc.), thesauri, taxonomies, subject heading systems, and other controlled value lists.
> 
> Documentation and the ontology are available at: http://www.loc.gov/standards/mads/rdf/
> 
> Based on review feedback, a number of modifications were made, both to the documentation and the ontology.  These include, but are not limited to:
> 
>  1) the introduction of a new class – DeprecatedAuthority – to clearly identify a resource that was once authoritative [1]
>  2) the introduction of a new class – RWO – and associated properties.  RWO is a resource that describes a Real World Object identified by the label of an Authority or DeprecatedAuthority [2]
>  3) the introduction of new properties, such as useFor and useInstead, that cover the traditional USE and USEFOR cases in library data and provide directional hints to superseded (or preceding) concepts [3]
> 
> The documentation has been updated to clarify design concepts and principles, and terminology [4].  It also discusses any additions and changes to the ontology.
> 
> We look forward to your thoughtful reviews of this revised version of the ontology by April 8. We encourage community feedback, as it is important to the process and feel fortunate to work with such an engaged group of professionals.  Many of the changes, in fact, are the result of community feedback, for which we're grateful.  Thank you.
> 
> The MODS listserv - MADS/XML is maintained as part of the community work on MODS (Metadata Object Description Schema) - is the preferred forum for feedback: http://listserv.loc.gov/listarch/mods.html (send mail to: mods@listserv.loc.gov).  Kevin Ford, the primary architect of the model, will be responding on that forum in order to have an open discussion.
> 
> [1] http://www.loc.gov/standards/mads/rdf/#t21
> [2] http://www.loc.gov/standards/mads/rdf/#t23
> [3] http://www.loc.gov/standards/mads/rdf/#t34
> [4] http://www.loc.gov/standards/mads/rdf/#t13
> 
> 
> *****
> 
> Kevin M. Ford
> Digital Project Coordinator
> Network Development & MARC Standards Office
> Library of Congress
> 101 Independence Avenue, SE
> Washington, DC 20540-4402
> 
> *****
> 
> 

-- 
Alistair Miles
Head of Epidemiological Informatics
Centre for Genomics and Global Health <http://cggh.org>
The Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics
Roosevelt Drive
Oxford
OX3 7BN
United Kingdom
Web: http://purl.org/net/aliman
Email: alimanfoo@gmail.com
Tel: +44 (0)1865 287669

Received on Tuesday, 29 March 2011 10:19:53 UTC