Quoting Ross Singer <rossfsinger_at_GMAIL.COM>:
> Actually, SKOS as "simple" isn't the problem. The problem is if you
> think there's a difference between "concepts of things" and the
> "things themselves". Where this really comes into light is when you
> think about the assertions you would make a skos:Concept, do these
> make sense when you apply them to the thing in question? For example,
> when did Bob Dylan or the Grand Canyon become a "subject"? VIAF says
> "2009-03-03T12:03:19+00:00" for Bob and id.loc.gov says "1986-02-11"
> for the Grand Canyon.
>
> Obviously the Grand Canyon wasn't "created" on Feb. 11th 1986 (and,
> I'm sure, neither was the subject heading, but that's another issue),
> but there's value in keeping the human construct of "concept"
> separated from the object in question. The creation date, for
> example, could tell a lot about when knowledge of a particular thing
> came into being. dc:modified tells a lot about when perceptions were
> changed :)
Well, I guess I just don't think we have a way to work with "things
themselves" in something like SKOS, because the "K" means "knowledge"
and the "S" means system, that is, somebody's system -- somebody's
ideas about something.
It isn't immediately clear to me what VIAF means with their use of
dcterms:created. Is DC being used in an administrative way?
dcterms:created is defined as the "date of creation of the resource."
That date could refer to when the "knowledge" was entered in that
particular "system," and it looks like VIAF is using it that way. (But
I can't find a definition of their schema other than saying they are
using SKOS. Anyone?)
My presumption is that the If you want a beginning date for the thing
itself, then you can add a DOB for Dylan, but you may have a hard time
being precise about the Grand Canyon (although geologists may have a
term for this). In either case, SKOS is too Simple to have data
elements for this, but one could pull them in from other name spaces.
To me, SKOS is used for a thesaurus or other list of terms, and is by
necessity artificial and contextual. The Grand Canyon will be treated
differently in a geology thesaurus than in a controlled list of
Western tourist destination. It's not like one of those is the real GC
and the other isn't, even though they may be described differently.
However, exactly what can be considered 'knowledge' vs. 'not
knowledge' for entry into SKOS is beyond me.
I happen to think that "subjectness" is one of the more difficult
things we will have to work with in creating a new data format, in
particular a linked-data one. I have a hard time with FRBR's view of
subjects as entities -- to me, subjectness is a relationship between
things, not a characteristic of the things themselves. I'd be willing
to say that any "resource" (in the RDF sense, that is anything you can
identify) can be a subject of another resource. Having done that, I
suppose you could do as FRBR/RDA has done and limit it to the entities
it has defined, but as a relationship not an "is-ness".
kc
>
>> Speaking of which, I took a look at FOAF and RDA/FRBR person entities, and
>> the only overlap is that they both have names. I'll try to write it up, but
>> it looks to me like we might be able to use FOAF for "social data" about our
>> identified persons (mainly contemporary ones), and thus extend RDA, and RDA
>> can help ground FOAF with more facts (date and place of birth, etc.).
>> There's more... will work on it.
>
> I definitely agree this can cover many schemas and different domains
> will have different contributions on the matter. An environmental
> scan like you're talking about here would be invaluable (don't equate
> this with "priceless" :)) to find the ways to integrate ourselves
> "with" the web rather than "around" it (which is what the RDA vocabs
> tend to lean towards now).
>
> -Ross.
>
--
Karen Coyle
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet
Received on Tue Apr 13 2010 - 14:40:45 EDT