Hi Bernhard,
I agree that we should start with identifiers for what we have, and work
backward from there. We also should hurry up and define properties that
represent the things we need. The RDA work is making a lot of progress
in that regard, though we still need a more robust set of properties for
name authorities, as I noted before. In the meantime, though, people
*want* a way to describe this data, and are bypassing us and *are*
defining their own specs.
You asked:
> We will have to provide the specs - who else? Or have you seen any specs
> for bibliographic data, developed by non-librarians, that are not in
> some ways inadequate or horrifying?
Well, non-librarians set up the first (and currently only) set of RDF
Classes and Properties representing the FRBR model, FOAF is in use
heavily, even to represent bib data, and I'm not sure I would
necessarily characterize the bibliographic ontology spec. [1] as
"inadequate or horrifying..." And even if inadequate, practical folks
wanting to work with data aren't going to wait much longer for us.
Frankly, they're doing a much better job of *modeling* bibliographic
data than we are, excepting Diane H., Karen C. & Jon P.'s work with RDA
and the stuff that Jennifer B. and the rest of the XC crew has going on
at U. Rochester.
-Corey
[1]http://bibliontology.com/
> Alexander Johannesen wrote:
>>
>> For any linked data to become of importance, you must first solve the
>> puzzle of identity management. But yes, if you did this, the library
>> would live on forever.
>>
>
> What better way, regarding the size of the calamity, than to start with
> what we have? There's the LCSH authority file, and there's VIAF.
> And the LC names and strings can, as they do now, serve as a first
> approximation to identifiers. Better of course, add the Id numbers to as
> many catalog data as possible.
> In LCSH, there are about 220.000 identifiers for work titles, and over
> 5 million for persons. And VIAF has links between persons and works.
> Here's where you can browse in the titles:
>
> http://www.biblio.tu-bs.de/db/lcsh/page.php?urG=TTL&urS=alice
>
> The link from there into WorldCat seems to work more often than not.
>
> These title authorities, however, are based on expressions, not works
> really, but the main title given in the record supposedly is always
> the original title. There is no usable linking from related titles
> to the originals! The future policy and requirements for dealing with
> these need to be discussed anyway.
>
> This, however, can only be a first step. Users will need more, they will
> need a robust and simple data format with which to communicate in easy
> and straightforward manners. And this is what we don't have. It needs to
> be something that would be readily understood by all sorts of
> third-party software. One might think of the formats used by some common
> personal bibliography software like Endnote. Those formats we could
> easily produce out of MARC. The format itself is not the whole story, it
> needs to be embedded into protocols that are easy to implement. It
> doesn't seem like vendors would develop any of this by themselves! Nor
> have Google or Amazon come up with any appropriate model. We will have
> to provide the specs - who else? Or have you seen any specs for
> bibliographic data, developed by non-librarians, that are not in some
> ways inadequate or horrifying?
>
> B.Eversberg
--
Corey A Harper
Metadata Services Librarian
New York University Libraries
20 Cooper Square, 3rd Floor
New York, NY 10003-7112
212.998.2479
corey.harper_at_nyu.edu
Received on Fri Nov 06 2009 - 15:08:31 EST