On 13 December 2011 22:17, Peter Noerr <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> 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.)
>

Yes.  However those descriptions have the potential to be as permanent as
the records that they were derived from.  As in the BL's case where the RDF
is stored, published and queried in [Talis] Kasabi.com:
http://kasabi.com/dataset/british-national-bibliography-bnb


>
> 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.
>

Me too.  I'm still searching searching for a budget airline term - no
baggage!

~Richard.

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Richard Wallis
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