Re: Checking "Apply library experience in curation" rec

On Tue, Sep 06, 2011 at 03:16:05PM -0700, Karen Coyle wrote:
> >As I see it, the point is not that libraries would themselves add links from
> >biographers or genealogists, but that by opening their data they would be
> >making it possible for biographers and genealogists themselves to
> >add the links
> >-- which is not quite what your sentence says.
> 
> Isn't the linked data message that by opening data as linked data
> the links "exist", and in both directions? It's not that
> genealogists and librarians would add links, but that both would
> create data in a linked data format. Any *relationships* created
> between URIs should benefit the entire LD cloud.

That's certainly true, and perhaps that is what we really want to say.

I was comparing to the original text, which says: "Data from biographers or
genealogists, for example, would immensely enrich resource descriptions in
areas to which librarians traditionally do not themselves attend" --
emphasizing the potential links made by non-librarians to library data (because
they are areas to which librarians traditional do not themselves attend).

Antoine's proposed re-write, in contrast, says that libraries would reap
benefits, etc.  Then in the next sentence: "Adding links to data from
biographers or genealogists, for example, would..." -- which (in my reading)
emphasizes links made by librarians pointing to non-library data.

None of the above are wrong; it's a question of what we want to emphasize.  I
thought the intention was to emphasize the enrichment of library data through
the creation of links by outsiders (non-librarians), but it would be fine with
me to word the message to emphasize more the "bi-directional" nature of links
-- and to convey, as I think you propose, that "adding links" is not a process
of going in and editing someone else's data (!), but simply of declaring
relationships to other data and publishing those relationships as Linked Data.

Tom

-- 
Tom Baker <tom@tombaker.org>

Received on Tuesday, 6 September 2011 22:53:14 UTC