Hi Tom,
I think it comes down to what you really mean by a book not having a
title. A few options I can think of:
1) This book was published without a title (or whatever verb you want
there if you want to cover unpublished material)
2) The author did not give this work a title
3) I've never heard of anyone calling this work by a formal title
There are certainly lots more options for a definition of untitled. But if
you're thinking along the lines of #3, I agree the open world assumption
comes into play, and you just done have a triple with a title-like
property, and if someone somewhere else has one, great. If #1 or #2 or
anything similar in structure, how about declaring titleless-ness as a
class that's a subclass of book? The semantics there would be "books
published without titles" or "books not given titles by their authors" or
whatever. You'd then just have a triple declaring this book part of that
class. Or the titleless-ness class could be broader than just books, and a
subclass of creative work (as defined in your vocabulary of choice).
Jenn
--------------------------------
Jenn Riley
Head, Carolina Digital Library and Archives
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
http://cdla.unc.edu/
http://www.lib.unc.edu/users/jlriley
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(919) 843-5910
On 9/13/13 7:32 AM, "Meehan, Thomas" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Hello,
>
>I'm not sure how sensible a question this is (it's certainly
>theoretical), but it cropped up in relation to a rare books cataloguing
>discussion. Is there a standard or accepted way to express negatives in
>RDF? This is best explained by examples, expressed in mock-turtle:
>
>If I want to say this book has the title "Cats in RDA" I would do
>something like:
>
>example:thisbook dc:title "Cats in RDA" .
>
>Normally, if a predicate like dc:title is not relevant to
>example:thisbook I believe I am right in thinking that it would simply be
>missing, i.e. it is not part of a record where a set number of fields
>need to be filled in, so no need to even make the statement. However,
>there are occasions where a positively negative statement might be
>useful. I understand OWL has a way of managing the statement This book
>does not have the title "Cats in RDA" [1]:
>
>[] rdf:type owl:NegativePropertyAssertion ;
> owl:sourceIndividual example:thisbook ;
> owl:assertionProperty dc:title ;
> owl:targetIndividual "Cats in RDA" .
>
>However, it would be more useful, and quite common at least in a
>bibliographic context, to say "This book does not have a title". Ideally
>(?!) there would be an ontology of concepts like "none", "unknown", or
>even "something, but unspecified":
>
>This book has no title:
>example:thisbook dc:title hasobject:false .
>
>It is unknown if this book has a title (sounds undesirable but I can
>think of instances where it might be handy[2]):
>example:thisbook dc:title hasobject:unknown .
>
>This book has a title but it has not been specified:
>example:thisbook dc:title hasobject:true .
>
>In terms of cataloguing, the answer is perhaps to refer to the rules
>(which would normally mandate supplied titles in square brackets and so
>forth) rather than use RDF to express this kind of thing, although the
>rules differ depending on the part of description and, in the case of the
>kind of thing that prompted the question- the presence of clasps on rare
>books- there are no rules. I wonder if anyone has any more wisdom on this.
>
>Many thanks,
>
>Tom
>
>[1] Adapted from http://www.w3.org/2007/OWL/wiki/Primer#Object_Properties
>[2] No many tbh, but e.g. title in an unknown script or indecipherable
>hand.
>
>---
>
>Thomas Meehan
>Head of Current Cataloguing
>Library Services
>University College London
>Gower Street
>London WC1E 6BT
>
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