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