Hi All,

I just recently subscribed to this list and have been watching for a
few days, expecting that I would do so for a while longer before
jumping in.  However I couldn't help but take special note of recent
posts with mention of MARCXML and MODS and discussion, at least
indirectly, of how those formats "play" with "linked-data" standards.
Since that is an area close to where I have been working lately, I
thought I'd offer a comment and also ask for some friendly feedback.

First my comment:

Here at UC San Diego Libraries, where I work, we have been generating
RDF data for a couple of years now, and more recently working with
triplestores and SPARQL.  We also, no surprise, have lots of MARC
data, and have developed some local strategies for migrating MARC to
MODS to RDF with a very local conversion scheme.  In order to learn
more about OWL and ontologies, and possibly to create a more generally
useful/acceptable expression of our MARC/MODS data as RDF I launched
into a project to convert the

	Library of Congress MODS XML schema
		http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-3.xsd

into a formal OWL ontology.  At one level this can be approached as a
rather mechanical process, on the other hand, I made some adjustments
to MODS predicate naming, with the intent of providing more meaning to
individual MODS-based RDF triples.  I won't try to explain that
further here, but if anyone has additional interest, more information
is available on my effort to produce and provide validity for a MODS
ontology on my blog, starting at a post entitled:

    Another Step Toward Lifting Library Metadata into the Cloud
	http://www.chrisfrymann.com/2009/07/22/mods-ontology-2/

and in following posts with comments and replies from and to Bruce
D'Arcus, especially regarding Bibliographic Ontology.

That's the end of my comment.  So now my question(s), or request for feedback.

Can we identify, some generally agreed on automateable strategy for
converting MARC/MODS to RDF (without having to limit to Dublin Core).
Or, in case I'm missing something, what work has already been done in
that direction?

As a corollary, I would appreciate thoughts any of you have on the
value of continuing the effort to develop a MODS ontology?  I attended
the Semantic Technology Conference recently where I was a speaker in
a:

	Session on Digital Libraries
		http://www.semantic-conference.com/session/1990/

and received quite a bit of interest at the conference, though I met
very few from the library community there.

I had hoped to provide something that could:

	* Potentially be more universal than our current local approach to
expressing MODS in RDF

	* Assign class and predicate names in an attempt to make dealing with
blank noes and SPARQL queries simpler and more natural, given the (to
me) somewhat complicated structure of MODS.

	* Provide a formal OWL base for assigning owl:sameAs relationships,
alternate rdfs:label values, etc.

However, I am very mindful of (and sympathetic to) thoughts such as
the following from Ed Summers, regarding:

"...taking a more organic approach to vocabulary selection, mixing and
matching vocabulary elements rather than imposing a particular
metadata world-view"

That would make sense to me if there was a generally accepted way to
automate the conversion.

Sorry for the somewhat long introductory comment and thanks in advance
for any helpful thoughts or suggestions.

Chris Frymann
Digital Library Architect
University of California San Diego Libraries

Email: [log in to unmask]
Blog: http://chrisfrymann.com