Quoting Ed Jones <ejones_at_NU.EDU>:
> In his May 2008 State of the Semantic Web presentation
> http://www.w3.org/2008/Talks/0518-SanJose-IH/HTML/, Ivan Herman,
> W3C, says on slide 11 (as one of the principles of the SW):
>
> One can use the Web infrastructure to denote "things"...
> --Eg: http://www.ivan-herman/me denotes, well, _me_ (not my
> Home page, not my foaf file, but _me_!)
>
Yes, it does denote him. And it is neither his home page nor his foaf
file (actually, there's nothing there). I think he's using it as an
identifier, not as a location re-purposed to an identifier. So he has
indeed create a URI for a real world thing.
Actually, I see library data as metadata for real world things, as
well. Although not in the URI sense, we do identify books and cds and
other real world items. That's one of the huge values of our metadata
... that we've created pretty good quality metadata for a whole bunch
of real world items that no one else has metadata for. Admittedly, we
need to re-structure the data, but in terms of content, we've got it.
kc
>
>
> Ed Jones
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
> [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Karen Coyle
> Sent: Friday, October 30, 2009 9:55 AM
> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Tim Berners-Lee on the Semantic Web
>
> It may also be useful to look at:
> http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Identity.html
> on what an identifier identifies. I need to spend a bit more time with
> the examples, but in this document, TBL cautions:
>
> "As we use RDF to describe things other than web pages, we in fact use
> properties to identify them, for example we use email addresses to
> identify people. We must not muddle the email address with the person."
>
> It seems to be his opinion that real world things do not have web
> addresses, and therefore must be represented by properties.[1] If
> other semantic web work has covered this (and perhaps contradicted
> it), I'd be interested in seeing that document. It could be that
> thinking as evolved on this.
>
> There is also a document "Four Uses for a URL" but it seems inconclusive:
> http://www.w3.org/2002/11/dbooth-names/dbooth-names_clean.htm
>
> Meanwhile, Stephen McDonald's example is an interesting twist on one
> of the issues that I've often heard John Kunze speak of, which is
> whether an identifier will live as long as the thing it identifies. In
> this case, the identifier has outlived the thing, and even at times
> been re-purposed.
>
> kc
>
> [1] This reminds me of another TBL quote, which I have on a different
> machine, but it basically says that to be on the web you have to have
> a URI. Real world things are not on the web. If we give them URIs,
> what does that mean? Are they on the web? I don't think so.
>
> Quoting "McDonald, Stephen" <Steve.McDonald_at_TUFTS.EDU>:
>
>> Alexander Johannesen said:
>>> Let me put it differently; which URI have the longest chance of
>>> survival, both in terms of as a resource locator *and* as a subject
>>> identifier, and which do you trust the most and do you think would
>>> be most accurate?
>>>
>>> 1. http://www.un.org/ (controlled by themselves)
>>> 2. http://id.oclc.org/org/d8445 (controlled by third-party)
>>
>> How about a counter-example? Try www.digital.com. Digital Equipment
>> Corporation used to be very important. You could have used
>> www.digital.com as a URI in the 90's, but the company went out of
>> business in 1998. Today that address takes you to a portion of Hewlett
>> Packard's sales pages. What do we use as a URI for nations and
>> organizations which don't exist any more? Yes, you might expect the
>> United Nations to be a fairly stable site, but the USSR is gone, a
>> number of countries in Europe are gone, hundreds of corporations are
>> gone, just since the beginning of the web era. What about URI's for
>> subjects and concepts which don't have an associated organization which
>> can create a website? For those cases the only possibility is a URI
>> created by some trusted organization, isn't it?
>>
>> You seem to be arguing that the best URI is a URI controlled by the
>> referent party itself. Do you have any suggestions on what should
>> happen when that party stops being able to control it?
>>
>> Steve McDonald
>> steve.mcdonald_at_tufts.edu
>>
>
> --
> Karen Coyle
> kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
> ph: 1-510-540-7596
> m: 1-510-435-8234
> skype: kcoylenet
>
--
Karen Coyle
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet
Received on Fri Oct 30 2009 - 18:39:24 EDT