Can bibliographic data be put directly onto the semantic web?

My recent LITA article is now available at the UC eScholarship Repository.

SUGGESTED CITATION:
Martha M. Yee, "Can Bibliographic Data Be Put Directly Onto the  
Semantic Web?" (2009). Information Technology and Libraries. 28 (2),  
pp. 55-80. Postprint available free at:  
http://repositories.cdlib.org/postprints/3369

ABSTRACT:

This paper is a think piece about the possible future of bibliographic  
control; provides a brief introduction to the semantic web and defines  
terms pertaining to the it.; discusses granularity and structure  
issues and the lack of standards for the efficient display and  
indexing of bibliographic data. It is also a report on a work in  
progress, an experiment in building an RDF model of more FRBRized  
cataloging rules than those about to be introduced to the library  
community (Resource Description and Access or RDA) and the creation of  
an RDF data model for the rules. I am now in the process of trying to  
model my cataloging rules in the form of an RDF model; this model can  
also be inspected at http://myee.bol.ucla.edu. In the process of doing  
this, I have discovered a number of areas in which I am not sure that  
RDF is sophisticated enough yet to deal with our data. This article is  
an attempt to identify some of those areas and explore whether or not  
the problems I have encountered are soluble, in other words, whether  
or not our data might be able to live on the semantic web. In this  
paper, I am focusing on raising the questions about the suitability of  
RDF to our data that have come up in the course of my work.

Martha M. Yee
Cataloging Supervisor, UCLA Film & Television Archive
myee_at_ucla.edu