On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 5:46 AM, Antoine Isaac <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Would it alleviate your concern if you could use something like foaf:focus
> [1] to link instances of mads:Authority to instances of foaf:Person?
I don't know. It would alleviate *one* concern to have such a
property. The definition for foaf:scope begins:
"The focus property relates a conceptualisation of something to the
thing itself. "
Not immediately intuitive ("focus"), but it sounds like that might apply.
What would be the reverse link: from MADS (agent as concept) to FOAF
(the thing/agent itself)?
Aside: it occurs to me that foaf:PersonalProfileDocumemt and
mads:Authority have some conceptual relationship?
But the other issue I have is much more fundamental, and that is
what's on the other end of the property: the MADS description itself.
I guess I just don't see the value of thinking of myself as a concept.
And examples like this are just insane (in particular that
mads:elementList property):
<madsrdf:componentList rdf:parseType="Collection">
<madsrdf:PersonalName rdf:nodeID="aHerman-Jerry-1933-">
<rdf:type rdf:resource="http://id.loc.gov/ontologies/mads/2010/11#Authority"/>
<madsrdf:authoritativeLabel>Herman, Jerry, 1933-</madsrdf:authoritativeLabel>
<madsrdf:elementList rdf:parseType="Collection">
<madsrdf:FullNameElement>
<madsrdf:elementValue>Herman, Jerry,</madsrdf:elementValue>
</madsrdf:FullNameElement>
<madsrdf:DateNameElement>
<madsrdf:elementValue>1933-</madsrdf:elementValue>
</madsrdf:DateNameElement>
</madsrdf:elementList>
</madsrdf:PersonalName>
<madsrdf:Title rdf:nodeID="aHello-Dolly!">
<rdf:type rdf:resource="http://id.loc.gov/ontologies/mads/2010/11#Authority"/>
<madsrdf:authoritativeLabel>Hello, Dolly!</madsrdf:authoritativeLabel>
<madsrdf:elementList rdf:parseType="Collection">
<madsrdf:TitleElement>
<madsrdf:elementValue>Hello, Dolly!</madsrdf:elementValue>
</madsrdf:TitleElement>
</madsrdf:elementList>
</madsrdf:Title>
</madsrdf:componentList>
Bruce
> This is what VIAF does (e.g., [2]), and there's nothing in the the current
> design of MADS/RDF that forbids it, since mads:Authority is a sub-class of
> skos:Concept.
>
> Best,
>
> Antoine
>
> [1] http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/#term_focus
> [2] http://viaf.org/viaf/24604287/rdf.xml
>
>
>> I've been away from this since my flaming away. Just wanted to chime
>> in on Rob's points ...
>>
>> On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 3:56 AM, Rob Styles<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi all, my 2 pence worth...
>>>
>>> Not a regular here, joining you specifically for the MADS/RDF discussion.
>>>
>>> ** Comments so far
>>> Some of the comments so far are a tad harsh. It's great to see LoC
>>> doing this stuff even if it's not exactly as one might have approached
>>> it. They know their data, maybe we should try to be a bit more
>>> supportive?
>>
>> Fair enough. But I do think we need to meet each other half way
>> ("their data" is also "our data" in my view), and I think your
>> comments are helpful (definitely more than mine) towards that end.
>>
>>> ** Conceptual approach
>>> I've worked with library data for a long time and it's not simple
>>> stuff. A common first mistake is often to assume that something like
>>> the name authority talks about people and organisations when in fact
>>> it talks about "bibliographic entities" — the names printed in books,
>>> mostly.
>>
>> Yes, I get this sort of indirection. But as an author of some of those
>> bibliographic items, I'm still a person. And there needs to be a way
>> to bring these two perspectives together. Concretely, if I have a
>> description of Samuel Clemens in FOAF, I really want to know how to
>> link that to some description of his pen persona/alter ego Mark Twain.
>>
>>> These have been modelled and re-modelled over many years and authority
>>> data has evolved to meet specific needs. It is not an ideal starting
>>> point for publishing Linked Data.
>>>
>>> However, I think authority data could be approached differently to
>>> MADS/RDF. Where MADS/RDF uses bibliographic terms, many of which come
>>> from the record structures employed, I would prefer to see real-world
>>> terminology used. So, a class of "Name" would be a good thing to have,
>>> then we can talk about names. Where it is possible to identify a real
>>> person it would be good to use a class of Person (ideally the foaf
>>> one) and where we know the name is a pseudonym it would be great to
>>> have a Pseudonym class too. The current MADS/RDF approach remodels the
>>> authority /record/ where it may be preferable to model the authority
>>> /data/.
>>
>> To me, this (natural language terms, rather than jargon) would go a
>> long way towards resolving some of my impulsive reaction against what
>> I was seeing.
>>
>>> The downside to that approach is that it can make round-tripping
>>> between the syntaxes harder. Consider round-tripping MARC and MARC/XML
>>> as compared with MARC and Dublin-Core XML?
>>
>> So this really comes down to what the priorities are for this effort?
>> Is it absolutely clean round-tripping with legacy data, or is it to
>> bring library data into the linked data world? Obviously one can try
>> to do both, but there's some clear tension here.
>>
>>> I would look again at anywhere you have a structure word such as
>>> /element/, /list/ or value as they are likely to be describing a
>>> record rather than describing things from the world.
>>
>> Right.
>>
>> I guess in the end, I'd really like the designers behind this effort
>> to imagine that people other than library people might also want to
>> use these data in the end, and to imagine how that might work.
>>
>> Imagine a case where some developer somewhere is writing some simple
>> PHP application and wants to store some bibliographic data, but also
>> wants to be able to link into some LoC SPARQL endpoint to enhance it.
>> How would they do that? How would they know how to get what kinds of
>> data, to present it how to their users?
>>
>> Right now, MADS RDF seems to me to be only intelligible to someone
>> with a library degree, or with an awful lot of free time on their
>> hands.
>>
>> And I agree, BTW, with Karen's suggestion that it makes sense to treat
>> MADS (or insert other library representation) name representations (I
>> don't, personas?) as distinct from foaf:Agent or foaf:Person, but to
>> enable them to be linked.
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>> Bruce
>>
>
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