Being no longer in Europe, I had completely missed the currently hot potato definition of EMU. But it had a nice feel to it <sigh>

I agree with Karen below that a record seems more bounded and static, whereas a description varies according to need. And that is the distinction I was trying to get at: that the item stored in some database is everything unique about that entity - and is static, until some data actually changes, whereas the description is built at run time for the user and may contain some data from the item record, and some aggregated from other, linked, item records. The records all have long term existence in databases and the like, whereas the description is a view of all that stored data appropriate for the moment. It will only be stored as a processing intermediate result (as a record, since its contents are now fixed), and not long term, since it would be broken up to bits of entity data and stored in a distributed linked fashion (much like, as I understand it, the BL did when reading MARC records and storing them as entity updates.)

Having said all that, I don't like the term "description" as it carries a lot of baggage, as do all the other terms. But I'm stuck for another one.

Peter

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Karen Coyle
> Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 12:23 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Namespace management, was Models of MARC in RDF
> 
> Quoting Simon Spero <[log in to unmask]>:
> 
> > On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 8:58 AM, Richard Wallis
> > <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
> >
> >
> >> However, I think you are thinking in the right direction - I am
> >> resigning myself to just using the word 'description'.
> >
> >
> > Q: In your definition, can *descriptions *be put* * into 1:1 correspondence
> > with records (where a record is a atomic asserted set of propositions about
> > a resource)?
> 
> Yes, I realize that you were asking Richard, but I'm a bit forward, as
> we know. I do NOT see a description as atomic in the sense that a
> record is atomic. A record has rigid walls, a description has
> permeable ones. A description always has the POTENTIAL to have a bit
> of unexpected data added; a record cuts off that possibility.
> 
> That said, I am curious about the permeability of the edges of a named
> graph. I don't know their degree of rigidity in terms of properties
> allowed.
> 
> kc
> 
> >
> > Simon
> >
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Karen Coyle
> [log in to unmask] http://kcoyle.net
> ph: 1-510-540-7596
> m: 1-510-435-8234
> skype: kcoylenet