So how do we get library authority files into the Semantic Web? I sent
the suggestion that authority files were "building blocks for the
Semantic Web" back in 2001, and Eric Miller sent my presentations on to
the Semantic Web working group in W3C, but nothing more was heard from
them. Anyone have suggestions?

The FOAF gets quickly into privacy issues, but obviously has some basic
parts that would help the retrieval of information. How can we take
best advantage of it? - Barbara

>>> [log in to unmask] 6/14/2004 3:35:48 PM >>>
On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 13:14:37 -0400, "Barbara B Tillett" <[log in to unmask]>
said:

> I've spoken and written for several years about the concepts of a
> virtual international authority file. One use is for international
> displays to let the user decide the language/script they want to
prefer,
> while enabling the clustering/linking of variant forms to enhace the
> precision of searches. Other possibilities are to provide
> links/navigation to resources by or about the entity identified by
the
> authority data (links to authoritative biographical references, links
to
> bibliographic databases for works by/about the person or corporate
body
> or family or on a particular subject (concept, event, place, time,
> object)). There are many possibilities, and I'd love to see MADS
enable
> more than we can do with MARC. - Barbara Tillett

Yes, I was thinking about some of this sort of thing as I was thinking
about the possiblities of MADS. As a consumer of bibliographic data,
I
can envision a few years down the road an LoC-based web service where
I
could highlight an author name in an article I am reading onscreen,
select an option and retreive the authority file for information on
the
author, including links to other references, and the ability to then
link from there to local library catalogs.

The more I think of the possiblities, the more I see parallels with
the
RDF/semantic web stuff. Anyone looked at the FOAF work? It's an RDF
schema that represent, among other things, people and their
relationships.

Here's a rather complete example of such a file:

http://norman.walsh.name/foaf

Bruce