*OpenWEMI - A minimally constrained vocabulary for Work, Expression,
Manifestation, Item*
To facilitate the use of the metadata concepts in Work, Expression,
Manifestation, and Item (WEMI) outside of the FRBR/LRM vocabulary, a
more general vocabulary that encodes WEMI with minimal constraints and
very general definitions is needed. OpenWEMI [1] has been developed to
fill this need. This is a project supported by the Dublin Core Metadata
Initiative (DCMI).[2] The vocabulary is defined under a DCMI namespace:
https://ns.dublincore.org/openwemi/.
The RDF vocabulary of OpenWEMI consists of classes for Work, Expression,
Manifestation and Item, as well as a super-class, Endeavor, that groups
these concepts. The classes are not defined as disjoint, as they are in
library data. Relationships between the classes are defined as
properties that maintain the direction of general-to-specific of WEMI
but that allow various combinations of classes to be employed. The
vocabulary also includes four properties that can be used to express
that any two resources are related through one or more WEMI classes:
commonWork, commonExpression, commonManifestation and commonItem.
The OpenWEMI vocabulary can be used directly but the practical
assumption is that it will be used as a general model for the definition
of context-specific metadata vocabularies. For example, a subclass of
the OpenWEMI Work could be a "MusicWork", an "ArtWork", or an
"ArchitectureWork". Anyone wishing to make use of the concepts of WEMI
can now do so, utilizing the OpenWEMI vocabulary as a meta-model for
their data.
The documentation for OpenWEMI is on the Dublin Core web site.[1] The
RDF vocabulary file is available in Turtle format.[3] Examples and other
documents, including GitHub issues, are publicly available.[4]
Background
In 1998 a working group of the International Federation of Library
Associations published a new and innovative model for library catalog
data, Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Data (FRBR).[5] It
included the four WEMI entities. The general concepts of WEMI have been
found useful by metadata creators unrelated to the library catalog use
case. Some developers have borrowed the WEMI concepts and integrated
them into their own applications.[6] These uses usually do not employ
the definitions and constraints of the LRM model, nor are there formal
vocabulary relations between these uses and the library vocabulary.
[1] https://www.dublincore.org/specifications/openwemi/
[2] https://dublincore.org/
[3] https://dcmi.github.io/openwemi/ns/openWEMI.ttl
[4] https://github.com/dcmi/openwemi/
[5] IFLA Study Group on the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic
Records. (2009) Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records. Den
Haag. http://archive.ifla.org/VII/s13/frbr/frbr_2008.pdf
[6] Coyle, Karen. Works, Expressions, Manifestations, Items: An
Ontology. Code4lib Journal, Issue 53, 2022-05-09.
https://journal.code4lib.org/articles/16491
--
Karen Coyle
kcoyle_at_kcoyle.net
http://kcoyle.net
Received on Mon Sep 09 2024 - 11:17:30 EDT