Quoting Owen Stephens <[log in to unmask]>:


> I agree this is a risk, and I suspect there is a further risk around  
> simply the feeling of 'ownership' by the community - perhaps it is  
> easier to feel ownership over an entire ontoloy than an 'application  
> profile' of somekind.
> It maybe that mapping is the solution to this, but if this is really  
> going to work I suspect it needs to be done from the very start -  
> otherwise it is just another crosswalk, and we'll get varying views  
> on how much one thing maps to another (but perhaps that's OK - I'm  
> not looking for perfection)

I agree with Owen here. One of the advantages of using a mixed  
vocabulary is that it forces you to think about your own data in  
relation to that of others, and thus makes it less likely that you  
will end up in a silo. Just creating your data in RDF is not enough to  
making linking happen. Look at where LCSH sits on the LD cloud[1] and  
you see that there are very few links to it. That's not because it  
isn't in proper RDF, it's because quite frankly no one outside of  
libraries has much use for library subject headings in their current  
state.

I think that "we" (whoever "we" is in this case) should be working  
hard to create links from RDA elements (which are already defined in  
RDF)[2] to other vocabularies, like FOAF, DC, BIBO, etc. If it should  
turn out that links of that nature cannot be made, for example because  
the content of the data would be significantly different ("Tolkien, J.  
R. R., John Ronald Reuel, 1892-1973" v. "J. R. R. Tolkien") then we  
need to find a way to MAKE our data play well with that of others. The  
problem that we have, IMNSHO, is not so much our data FORMAT but our  
DATA itself. If we don't consider linking outside of the library  
world, we will just create another silo for ourselves; an RDF silo,  
but still a silo.

(As an aside, there is some concern that the use of FRBR will make  
linking from library bibliographic data to non-library bibliographic  
data difficult, if not impossible. Having had some contact with  
members of the FRBR review group, they seem impervious to that concern.)

kc
[1] http://linkeddata.org
[2] http://rdvocab.info

>
> That said, I believe we need absolutely to be aiming for a world in  
> which we work with mixed ontologies - no matter what we do other,  
> relevant, data sources will use FOAF, Bibo etc.. I'm convinced that  
> this gives us the opportunity to stop treating what are very mixed  
> materials in a single way, while still exploiting common properties.  
> For example Musical materials are really not well catered for in  
> MARC, and we know there are real issues with applying FRBR to them -  
> and I see the implementation of RDF/Linked Data as an opportunity to  
> tackle this issue by adopting alternative ontologies where it makes  
> sense, while still assigning common properties (dc:title) where this  
> makes sense.
>
>
>> HOWEVER!
>>
>> When we're done talking about ontologies and vocabularies, we need to
>> talk about identifiers, and there I would swing the other way and let
>> reuse govern, because it is when you reuse an identifier you start
>> thinking about what that identifiers means to *both* parties. Or, put
>> differently ;
>>
>> It's remarkably easier to get this right if the identifier is a
>> number, rather than some word. And for that reason I'd say reuse
>> identifiers (subject proxies) as they are easier to get right and
>> bring a lot of benefits, but not ontologies (model proxies) as they
>> can be very difficult to get right and don't necessarily give you what
>> you want.
>
> Agreed :)
>



-- 
Karen Coyle
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