Re: Tim Berners-Lee on the Semantic Web

From: Karen Coyle <lists_at_nyob>
Date: Sun, 1 Nov 2009 10:34:40 -0800
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Great examples, Ross!

I do think you have a mix here of Work and Manifestation (because of  
the LCCN and ISBN and the links to manifestations), but I wonder if we  
won't be resolving that with class and domain definitions... So that  
the subjects will be defined as Work, and then you've connected that  
Work to Manifestations by including those manifestation-related  
identifiers?

As an FYI, whereas you have included both display forms and URI forms  
of subjects separately as:

<dc:subject>Soldiers--Fiction</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Teenage girls--Fiction</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Teenage pregnancy--Fiction</dc:subject>
<terms:subject  
rdf:resource="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/sh2007101961#concept"/>
<terms:subject  
rdf:resource="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/sh2008104232#concept"/>
<terms:subject  
rdf:resource="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/sh2008108377#concept"/>

Andy Powell recently put up examples on his blog in this format:

  <dcterms:subject>
       <rdf:Description  
rdf:about="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/sh85101653#concept">
         <rdf:value>Physics</rdf:value>
       </rdf:Description>
     </dcterms:subject>

Which treats the display form as a label on the URI value form. It has  
the advantage of keeping the two together as a unit, but I'm a bit  
uneasy about the inclusion of a single display form, unless you really  
know what audience you will be showing it to (e.g. this excludes  
carrying alternate entry vocabulary). And I'm still unclear what the  
explicit relationship is between the rdf:Description and the  
rdf:value... but in any case, this seems to be the DCMI form.

I also wonder what we'll do with situations where we have:

	Teenage girls -- Fiction -- Comic books, strips, etc.

and id.loc.gov has only

	Teenage girls -- Fiction

It seems that (other than the problem of matching a longer string to a  
shorter, rather than vice-versa) we'll want a way to say: this subject  
heading is an extension of this LC subject in the LC authority file.  
It seems like it could be a simple relationship... yes?

kc

Quoting Ross Singer <rossfsinger_at_GMAIL.COM>:

> So in an effort of putting my money (or, I suppose, data) where my
> mouth is, I made a stab at Jim's challenge that linked library data
> wasn't going to be a short term achievement.
>
> Inspired by Toby Inkster's wrapper around Amazon's API for books
> (http://purl.org/NET/book/isbn/0553804367#book), I started working on
> something similar to LoC's LCCN Permalink service
> (http://lccn.loc.gov/) -- it just takes the existing LCCN and starts
> to turn the MARC data into linked data.
>
> It's definitely a work in progress, but here are some examples:
>
> http://lccn.heroku.com/2005042949
>
> http://lccn.heroku.com/94510751
>
> http://lccn.heroku.com/36029351
>
> http://lccn.heroku.com/92751476
>
> These relate to id.loc.gov/authorities, dbpedia, the dbtune rdfication
> of musicbrainz, the openlibrary and rdfication of the data that used
> to be available from LibraryThing.
>
> The nice part of this is that it's entirely created dynamically, so
> instead of having to know all of the data sources and data you want to
> model before you run some batch conversion over all of LC's data, you
> can instead add changes when they come to you.  The added bonus is
> that by basing it on LCCN, it's useful to many people immediately
> (even though LCCNs certainly aren't universal, they are common enough
> to be useful).
>
> The source code for this is here:
> http://github.com/rsinger/LinkedLCCN
>
> And much of the modeling is coming from:
> http://github.com/rsinger/marc2rdf-modeler
>
> Any and all recommendations welcome.
>
> -Ross.
> On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 3:45 AM, James Weinheimer   
> <j.weinheimer_at_aur.edu> wrote:
>> All,
>>
>> Here is a very interesting interview with Tim Berners-Lee, who talks about
>> the Semantic web.
>> http://fora.tv/2009/10/08/Next_Decade_Technologies_Changing_the_World-Tim-Berners-Lee.
>> He gives some fascinating examples of the benefits of simply placing your
>> information on the web in whatever format you have (as he said, even just a
>> comma-separated value) because if people want it, they wil take it and
>> rework it to their own benefit.
>>
>> One of the basic ideas he discusses is that, while you may work to put up a
>> site that works the way you want it to, that isn't what others want today.
>> Others want to have the same information but want to use it in other ways
>> that you, as the initial creator, haven't even dreamed of.
>>
>> There are several consequences to the library community from his talk,
>> ranging from formats to sharing. I am trying to imagine how the library
>> catalog will fit into the scenario he describes, a scenario that is working
>> itself out right now. The catalog records (the actual data) are obviously of
>> prime importance (format as well), and while I think the catalog itself can
>> play a highly important role, I'm still not sure how.
>>
>> I suggest it to all.
>>
>> Jim Weinheimer
>>
>

-- 
Karen Coyle
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet
Received on Sun Nov 01 2009 - 13:36:21 EST