On Dec 11, 2011, at 11:00 PM, Karen Coyle wrote:

> 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.


I'm sure you're aware of these, but for general edification here are some possible ways to think about an "implicit record":

Concise Bounded Description: http://www.w3.org/Submission/CBD, or better for libraries IMHO, Symmetric Concise Bounded Description: http://www.w3.org/Submission/CBD/#scbd

The Minimum Self-contained Graph ("MSG"), details of which are available in "Signing individual fragments of an RDF graph." from (ACM WWW '05), as well as "RDFSync: efficient remote synchronization of RDF models" from (ISWC2007+ASWC2007).
http://www.www2005.org/cdrom/docs/p1020.pdf
http://data.semanticweb.org/pdfs/iswc-aswc/2007/ISWC2007_RT_Tummarello(1).pdf.

RDF Molecules, details in "Tracking RDF Graph Provenance using RDF Molecules," from (ISWC '05).
http://aisl.umbc.edu/resources/178.pdf

All of these are basically defined as pieces of larger graphs, although they can be considered as conditions of some kind of "validity" for a graph. I suspect that part of the hurdle for our community in moving to new patterns of work is the gap between current workflows (which create records) and future workflows (which may enrich shared graphs by much smaller increments then current notions of "record"). "[T]he unit of metadata that libraries may create in the future" as the unit in a given workflow may be only as large as the triple.

---
A. Soroka
Online Library Environment
the University of Virginia Library




On Dec 11, 2011, at 11:00 PM, Karen Coyle wrote:

>> 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.