Re: Tim Berners-Lee on the Semantic Web

From: Ross Singer <rossfsinger_at_nyob>
Date: Tue, 3 Nov 2009 10:39:27 -0400
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 5:31 PM, Ed Summers <ehs_at_pobox.com> wrote:

> At the time there wasn't enough real world use of SKOS w/ coordination
> to warrant cooking something into the SKOS vocabulary itself. However,
> as Karen points out there is a real need.
>
> Since the components are controlled:
>
>  Teenage girls -- Fiction <http://id.loc.gov/authorities/sh2008112612#concept>
>  Comic books, strips, etc <http://id.loc.gov/authorities/sh99001401#concept>
>
> it's possible to imagine a vocabulary that would let you do this:
>
> @prefix rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#> .
> @prefix rda: <http://RDVocab.info/Elements/> .
> @prefix dct: <http://purl.org/dc/terms/> .
> @prefix lcsh: <http://id.loc.gov/authorities/> .
> @prefix skos: <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#> .
> @prefix ex: <http://example.org/coordination#> .
>
> <http://lccn.heroku.com/36029351#i>
>    rda:titleProper "Charlotte Temple" ;
>    dct:subject [
>        ex:coordinates
> <http://id.loc.gov/authorities/sh2008112612#concept>,
> <http://id.loc.gov/authorities/sh99001401#concept> ;
>        skos:prefLabel "Teenage girls--Fiction--Comic books, strips, etc."
>    ] .
>

This seems like a good start to me, although this certainly starts to
get outside my comfort level with the inner workings of LCSH.

My questions would be -- if order matters (and... I think it does,
yeah?), these should probably be in an rdfs:Seq or have some notion of
the order of coordination.

Is this a feature commonly found in other thesauri?

> This is just a straw-man to demonstrate that there are potential
> solutions. I wonder has the time come to put together a SKOS
> coordination vocabulary? I recently heard from Antoine Isaac that
> several people are considering forming a Libraries and the Semantic
> Web Incubator Group, or Interest Group of some kind at the W3C. This
> would be a nice piece of functionality for such a group to work on I
> think. My only concern is that things at the W3C might not be open
> enough to allow participation from folks in libraries -- since most
> libraries aren't W3C members. But I imagine there is a way to involve
> any interested folks. If you are interested Antoine (cc'ed here) is
> the person to get in touch with at this point.
>

This would be great.  It would really be wonderful to see libraries
take a more proactive position within the larger web community.  I see
your point about W3C, although there are obviously a fair number of
institutions that have libraries or deal with libraries that are
members:
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Member/List

If the W3C isn't open to library non-member voices, I suppose such a
group could exist outside of the W3C and the intersection of
membership between this IG and the W3C could "represent" the external
group to the W3C.

I realize that last paragraph is a little convoluted...

-Ross.
Received on Tue Nov 03 2009 - 09:41:00 EST