On 11 December 2011 23:47, Karen Coyle <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Quoting Richard Wallis <[log in to unmask]>:
>
>
>  You get the impression that the BL "chose a subset of their current
>> bibliographic data to expose as LD" - it was kind of the other way around.
>> Having modeled the 'things' in the British National Bibliography domain
>> (plus those in related domain vocabularis such as VIAF, LCSH, Geonames,
>> Bio, etc.), they then looked at the information held in their [Marc] bib
>> records to identify what could be extracted to populate it.
>>
>
> Richard, I've been thinking of something along these lines myself,
> especially as I see the number of "translating X to RDF" projects go on. I
> begin to wonder what there is in library data that is *unique*, and my
> conclusion is: not much. Books, people, places, topics: they all exist
> independently of libraries, and libraries cannot take the credit for
> creating any of them. So we should be able to say quite a bit about the
> resources in libraries using shared data points -- and by that I mean, data
> points that are also used by others. So once you decide on a model (as BL
> did), then it is a matter of looking *outward* for the data to re-use.
>

Yes!



>
> I maintain, however, as per my LITA Forum talk [1] that the subject
> headings (without talking about quality thereof) and classification
> designations that libraries provide are an added value, and we should do
> more to make them useful for discovery.
>
>
The wider world is always looking for good ways to categorise things.  The
library community should make it easy for others to utilise their rich
heritage of such things. LCSH is an obvious candidate, so is VIAF amongst
others.  The easier we make it, the more uptake there will be and the more
inbound links in to library resources we will get.  By easier, I am
suggesting that efforts to map these library concepts (where they fit) to
their wider world equivalents found in places like Dbpeadia, New York
Times, and Geonames, will greatly enhance the use and visibility of library
resources.


>
>
>> I know it is only semantics (no pun intended), but we need to stop using
>> the word 'record' when talking about the future description of 'things' or
>> entities that are then linked together.   That word has so many built in
>> assumptions, especially in the library world.
>>
>
> I'll let you battle that one out with Simon :-), but I am often at a loss
> for a better term to describe the unit of metadata that libraries may
> create in the future to describe their resources. Suggestions highly
> welcome.
>

Your are not the only one who is looking for a better term for what is
being created - maybe we should hold a competition to come up with one.



-- 
Richard Wallis
Technology Evangelist, Talis
http://consulting.talis.com
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