I'm at the Koha Conference in Reno so I just saw this. One of the big
problems with using library catalog authority data is that it is different
from other types of data. It is there only to help people search the
catalog correctly. And not *any* catalog, but very specific catalogs: the
ones that use the specific form of name. Other catalogs may use other forms
of name. The URI may help in this.
Nevertheless, the information in a library authority record is limited
because the purpose is limited. There may be some very minimal biographical
information, but only enough to help the cataloger to disambiguate headings.
Does this mean that the authority record has no importance? Of course it's
important, but in a different way from other types of linked data. In
itself, such information is not really data, but something different,
similar to a traffic policeman pointing the correct way for traffic to go.
This is important, but fundamentally different from other types of "linked
data" as envisioned by people such as Tim Berners-Lee e.g.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga1aSJXCFe0. When we see these sorts of
videos, he is talking about different kinds of information from what is
seen in an authority record.
By making everything into linked data, there will still be problems with
information overload; there will still be problems with spam; there will
still be problems of consistency. In other words, theory is one thing, and
practice is another, and there will be incredible problems with making
anything of practical utility to the actual users.
On Mon, Oct 14, 2013 at 9:38 PM, Alexander Johannesen <
alexander.johannesen_at_gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 10:55 AM, Karen Coyle <lists_at_kcoyle.net> wrote:
> > Is this the kind of thing you mean?
> >
> > VIAFbot and the Integration of Library Data on Wikipedia
>
> If VIAF happened 15 - 20 years ago, then probably. Now they're a nice
> to have feature that I suspect few will use (no, no, I saw the stats
> in the article, just not sure what that traffic *is*), but that's just
> speculation, and I'm happy if I was wrong on that.
>
> Also, the point was the use of - in this case - http://viaf.org/viaf
> in ontologies and associated technologies, where instead of using
> http://viaf.org/viaf/44485902/viaf.xml people will rather use
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudio_Monteverdi, not because either
> does the job of identifying Monteverdi (the composer), but because if
> you have one namespace that contains most of the things you're talking
> about, you don't add another one just to deal with yet another subset
> (take the historic context of Monteverdi, and count the number of
> namespaces you need if Wikipedia *didn't* have most of it; the list is
> quite long). Most people, I think, would agree that it's mixed content
> which is the exciting bit, however people are people and are not going
> to pollute their namespaces to get library creds. Even though I wish
> they would.
>
> So I'm not being negative on what efforts and tools are being done
> now, apart from saying it's too late to have an impact where it
> matters (apart from for librarians).
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Alex
> --
> Project Wrangler, SOA, Information Alchemist, UX, RESTafarian, Topic Maps
> --- http://shelter.nu/blog/ ----------------------------------------------
> ------------------ http://www.google.com/profiles/alexander.johannesen ---
>
--
James L. Weinheimer weinheimer.jim.l_at_gmail.com
First Thus: http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/
Cooperative Cataloging Rules: http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules
Received on Thu Oct 17 2013 - 21:55:35 EDT