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On Thu, Dec 8, 2011 at 12:16 PM, Richard Wallis <[log in to unmask]>wrote: > *A record is a silo within a silo* > * * > A record within a catalogue duplicates the > publisher/author/subject/etc.information stored in adjacent records > describing items by the same > author/publisher/etc. This community spends much of it's effort on > the best ways to index and represent this duplication to make records > accessible. Ideally an author, for instance, should be > described [preferably only once] and then related to all the items they > produced > I would argue that this analysis of the nature of what it is to be a record is incomplete, and that a more nuanced analysis sheds light on some of the theoretical and practical problems that came up during the BL Linked Data meeting. From a logical point of view, a bibliographic record can seen as a theory - that is to say a consistent set of statements. There may be records describing the same thing, but the theories they represent need not be consistent with the statements in the first collection. The record is the context in which these statements are made. An example of where the removal of context leads to problems can be seen by considering the case of a Document to which FAST headings are assigned by two different catalogers, each of whom has a different opinion as to the primary subject of the Work. Each "facet" is a separate statement within the each theory; each theory may represent a coherent view of the subject, yet the direct combination of the two theories may entail statements that neither indexer believes true. The are also performance benefits that arise from admitting records into one's ontology; a great deal of metalogical information, especially that for provenance, is necessarily identical for all statements made within the same theory; all the statements share the same utterer, and the statements were made at the same time. Instead of repeating this metalogical information for every single statement, provenance information can be maintained and reasoned over just once. Simon