Example for name authority file vs. "real-world persons"

Hi,

In the process of gathering and commenting vocabularies for the deliverable on vocabularies and datasets, Jeff made an relevant comment on the vCard ontology:

>
> I would note, though, that I found vCard very confusing until I realized
> it doesn't really model people, it models business cards (which are best
> understood as foaf:Documents). A v:VCard is a separate entity from (say)
> a foaf:Person. (I am not my business card). A good way to relate these
> two individuals would be via foaf:page/foaf:topic. For example:
>
> :alice a foaf:Person ;
> 	foaf:page :vcard1 .
> :vcard1 a v:VCard ;
> 	foaf:topic :alice ;
> 	v:fn "Alice".
>
> It's very weird to believe that "Alice" is a property of my business
> card, but that's how VCard models reality. If we understand these to be
> business cards, this is a little easier to swallow. I'm not convinced
> VCards are the best way to model this kind of information except for
> applications that care about business contacts.


to which I answered:


> I find that quite interesting that you're uncomfortable with vCard's model.
>In fact maybe we could use that example to make library people understand how
>their authority data is cumbersome for people from another domains.
>The possible confusion between between a foaf:Person and a v:vCard is not without
>reminding me of the possible confusion between a foaf:Person and a skos:Concept,
>as provided, say, in VIAF! With foaf:focus playing the same role as foaf:topic.


Right now I'm not sure where this would fit, but if in our report we need an analogy for library people to get an idea of the potential mismatch between different modelling foci, we have one :-)

Antoine

Received on Thursday, 31 March 2011 20:36:24 UTC