Quoting Richard Wallis <[log in to unmask]>:


>
> Why bother?
> Transforming Marc in to RDF is an interesting and challenging exercise, but
> there is little point in doing it without having some potential benefits in
> mind beyond the "it would be great to have our stuff in a new format"

Richard, perhaps we have been a bit sloppy with our language, and I  
take some responsibility for that as the initiator of this thread.

I don't believe that anyone is saying that we have a goal of having a  
re-serialization of ISO 2709 in RDF so that we can begin to use that  
as our data format. We *do* have millions of records in 2709 with  
cataloging based on AACR or ISBD or other rules. The move to any  
future format will have to include some kind of transformation of that  
data. The result will be something ugly, at least at first: AACR in  
RDF is not going to be "good" linked data. (The slide that I pointed  
to earlier from a talk at SWIB11 shows a glass of water and a stem  
glass of wine -- it refers to MARC data in RDF and asks: if you pour  
water into a wine glass, does it become wine? Obviously, it does not.)  
However, all of the library data that we have today to experiment with  
as linked data is derived from MARC record data. So my initial  
question was intended to gather a bunch of different solutions as a  
way to seeing the different views on this.

I have started (lord knows if I'll ever have time to finish) an  
analysis of the data in MARC records
    http://futurelib.pbworks.com/w/page/29114548/MARC%20elements
with an attempt to separate the semantics from the format. That isn't  
in itself an end goal, but a means to an end -- a way to understand  
what information we may wish to carry forward into a new metadata  
environment. The MARC format hides a lot of the meaning by coding it  
in indicators and spreading it across fields designed for display,  
etc. I think that an analysis of this type could help us move further  
from MARC without losing the data we already have created.

I believe that you and I share a concern: that current library data is  
based on such a different model than that of the Semantic Web that by  
looking at our past data we will fail to understand or take advantage  
of linked data as it should be. This is my concern with FRBR and RDA:  
they are based on that previous model, and cannot be directly  
expressed as linked data, or at least not as "good" linked data. Our  
problem is not so much with MARC, which is a reflection of the catalog  
record, but with our entire view of the catalog entry as the end  
product of our work. Unfortunately, the library cataloging world has  
no proposal for linked data cataloging. I'm not sure where we could  
begin.

kc

>
>
> RDF is a means to an end
> We shouldn't loose sight of the RDF TLA, Resource Description Framework -
> it is a framework for describing [our] resources.   It is the, de facto,
> standard for publishing Linked Data.   Publishing descriptions of our
> resources as Linked Data does fall in to the potential benefits arena -
> reuse, mixing, merging, lowering barriers to use of data across, and from
> outside of, the library community.
>
>
> If it waddles and quacks, it is probably still a duck
> Transforming a Marc record to XMLMarc just created the same record in in a
> different wrapper.  Apart from the technical benefit (of being able to use
> generic tools to work with it), it did not move us much further forward
> towards opening up our data to wider use. Transforming Marc, of any flavor,
> into an RDF representation of a record still leaves us with a record per
> item - a digital card catalogue equivalent.
>
>
> A record is a silo within a silo
> A record within a catalogue duplicates the publisher/author/subject/etc.
> information stored in adjacent records describing items by the same
> author/publisher/etc.  This community spends much of it's effort on the
> best ways to index and represent this duplication to make records
> accessible.   Ideally an author, for instance, should be described
> [preferably only once] and then related to all the items they produced
>
>
> Linked Data should be the goal
> At the event mentioned by Mike, Linked Data and Libraries[1], the British
> Library launched their initial data model for the British National
> Bibliography[2].  "One of the key concepts of Linked Data is to represent
> data as a set of interlinked things. These things are referred to as
> objects of interest, they are things about which we can make statements."
> In this model you get statements about things (eg. books, authors,
> publishers, publishing events, subjects, places, etc.) and the links
> between them - not a record per item.
>
>
> Storing Marc in an RDF triple, or link to it?
> The question I would ask is, which consumer of your data would this be
> useful for?  Secondly, whatever your answer, it does not make sense to say
> that this item, or author, or publisher 'thing' was derived from a
> particular Marc record - you could perhaps at data set, or graph, level
> (using the provenance vocabulary) define that it was transformed from a
> particular source, at a time, using a method, by a person/process.
>
>
> Who's Ontology
> Do we only use library domain ontologies/vocabularies or do we employ dc,
> foaf, bibo, etc. ?  Do we use dc:creator which most of the [non-library]
> world will understand, or some esoteric [to them] rda properties to
> describe corporate and many other nuance of authorship?   If you want to
> enable general application developers/data consumers to use your data, you
> need to apply the well known [if possibly course-grained or lossy] terms.
> If you want to preserve the rich detail extracted from the source Marc, you
> need to delve deeper in to bibliographically oriented properties.   Can you
> do both? Yes.  Should you do both? Probably.
>
> ~Richard.
>
> I think I better stop now and contemplate a blog post to further these
> thoughts.
>
>
> [1]
> http://consulting.talis.com/resources/presentations-from-linked-data-and-libraries-2011/
> [2]http://consulting.talis.com/2011/07/british-library-data-model-overview/
>
>
>
> --
> Richard Wallis
> Technology Evangelist, Talis
> http://consulting.talis.com
> Tel: +44 (0)7767 886 005
>
> Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/richardwallis
> Skype: richard.wallis1
> Twitter: @rjw
> IM: [log in to unmask]
>



-- 
Karen Coyle
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ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet