On Thu, Dec 8, 2011 at 12:16 PM, Richard Wallis <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> *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
>

I would argue that  this  analysis of the nature of what it is to be a
record is incomplete, and that a more nuanced analysis sheds light on some
of the theoretical and practical problems that came up during the BL Linked
Data meeting.

From a logical point of view, a bibliographic record can seen as a theory -
that is to say a consistent set of statements.  There may be  records
describing the same thing, but the theories they represent need not be
consistent with the statements in the first collection.  The record is the
context in which these statements are made.

An example of where the removal of  context leads to problems can be seen
by considering the case of a Document to which FAST headings are assigned
by two different catalogers, each of whom has a different opinion as to the
primary subject of the Work.  Each  "facet" is a separate statement within
the each theory; each theory may represent a coherent view of the subject,
yet the direct combination of  the two theories may entail statements that
neither indexer believes true.

The are also performance benefits that arise from admitting records into
one's ontology; a great deal of metalogical information, especially that
for provenance, is necessarily identical for all statements made within the
same theory;  all the statements share the same utterer, and the statements
were made at the same time.  Instead of repeating this metalogical
information for every single statement, provenance information can be
maintained and reasoned over just once.

Simon