Jeff, the blog post you pointed to said:
"Maybe it's time to let go of our emotional attachment to treasured old
friends like FOAF and embrace schema.org as the vocabulary to use
wherever possible? It won't cover everything, but it might cover the 50%
of classes and properties that dominate any domain of interest."
I prefer to use a mix of carefully-designed focused vocabularies rather
than one that covers 50% of a mish-mosh of topics. I know that there is
a long tail of miscellany, but that isn't a reason to treat everything
as miscellaneous when trying to make information connections. (With
apologies to Dave Weinberger, who has given credence to miscellany.) I
think that there are vocabs that do a better job than schema.org in
various areas, so I would consider schema.org as fine for SEO and a last
resort for science, scholarly endeavors, and librarianship.
kc
On 5/23/13 11:45 AM, Young,Jeff (OR) wrote:
> Schema.org doesn't claim to be a single vocabulary for everything. Hence the long tail.
>
> http://philarcher.org/diary/2012/danbri/long_tail.png
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Karen Coyle [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>> Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2013 2:41 PM
>> To: Bibliographic Framework Transition Initiative Forum
>> Cc: Young,Jeff (OR)
>> Subject: Re: [BIBFRAME] re-using existing properties (was
>> http://bibframe.org/documentation/bibframe-authority/ and the
>> "lightweight abstraction layer")
>>
>> No, it is the vocabulary. As we've run into in the BibEx group (a
>> schema.org group for bibliographic data that Jeff and I are on)[1], the
>> vocabulary has some serious problems. In fact, I happen to think that a
>> single vocabulary for "everything" is nonsense. I prefer, as others
>> have suggested here, re-usable vocabularies -- especially if those are
>> carefully designed. Presumably we need only a small number of
>> vocabularies for information about people. Ditto for places. I see
>> vocabs like dc, foaf and geonames to be "anchor vocabularies" -- strong
>> but simple vocabularies around which extensions can be developed.
>>
>> It makes sense to me for libraries to be collaborators in the
>> development of a finite number of anchor vocabularies that will help
>> them interact with other communities. It's what the Semantic Web is all
>> about - find those hooks that link your data and someone else's data.
>>
>> That said, I don't think that everything in library data is going to be
>> a link to something else. It may not make sense to try to convert
>> things like 245 $c (rest of title) into linked data. I'm beginning to
>> think that it would not be amiss to consider descriptive cataloging as
>> mainly a document, with some internal coding, and include linkable data
>> ("access points" in RDA terms) that completes the bibliographic
>> metadata.
>>
>> What I don't think we've considered yet is: who and what do we want to
>> link to? and why? The W3C LLD group did come up with some use cases for
>> library linked data, but I think we need more.
>>
>> kc
>> [1] http://www.w3.org/community/schemabibex/
>> [2] http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/XGR-lld-usecase-20111025/
>>
>> On 5/23/13 11:11 AM, Young,Jeff (OR) wrote:
>>> Is it the vocabulary that is inconsistent or reality itself? The
>> world is a messy place that evolves over time, as will our vocabulary.
>> Schema.org is designed for common sense. A person is a person, a book
>> is a book, an event is an event, etc. It's true that common sense
>> breaks down beyond a certain level, but it's absurd to think we can
>> skip over common sense as a 1st step.
>>>
>>> Jeff
>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: Karen Coyle [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>>>> Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2013 1:34 PM
>>>> To: Young,Jeff (OR)
>>>> Cc: [log in to unmask]
>>>> Subject: Re: [BIBFRAME] re-using existing properties (was
>>>> http://bibframe.org/documentation/bibframe-authority/ and the
>>>> "lightweight abstraction layer")
>>>>
>>>> Jeff, unfortunately schema.org is one of the worst ontologies I've
>>>> ever seen for inconsistency, a single, narrow views. I hope it does
>>>> NOT become the main ontology, at least not without some huge
>> revision.
>>>>
>>>> kc
>>>> (note: the blog post proposes schema.org as our future "OoE" -
>>>> Ontology of Everything.)
>>>>
>>>> On 5/23/13 9:49 AM, Young,Jeff (OR) wrote:
>>>>> Regarding FOAF and "Testing status", I thought this blog from
>> awhile
>>>> back rang true:
>>>>> http://philarcher.org/diary/2012/danbri/
>>>>>
>>>>> Jeff
>>>>>
>>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>>> From: Bibliographic Framework Transition Initiative Forum
>>>>>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Karen Coyle
>>>>>> Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2013 12:41 PM
>>>>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>>>>> Subject: Re: [BIBFRAME] re-using existing properties (was
>>>>>> http://bibframe.org/documentation/bibframe-authority/ and the
>>>>>> "lightweight abstraction layer")
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Nate, what this says to me is that we need to work more
>>>>>> collaboratively with others. This is what I hoped would come out
>> of
>>>>>> the NISO Bib Framework meeting (but unfortunately did not). I've
>>>> been
>>>>>> very frustrated with foaf - so much potential, and yet so
>>>>>> un-realized. And it isn't being very actively developed anymore.
>> So
>>>>>> we can either roll our own, OR try to find a way to collaborate on
>>>>>> standards for the Web, not standards for the library community
>> only.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> If we were, for example, a community of flat worm neuron
>>>> researchers,
>>>>>> it might make sense to develop our own ontology with little direct
>>>>>> interaction with that of others. But the data that libraries will
>>>>>> create is by definition not exclusive to the library use case --
>>>>>> our metadata describes people, intellectual resources, places,
>>>>>> events, time periods.
>>>>>> These are about as close to universal concepts as you'll get.
>>>> There's
>>>>>> probably nothing in our data that shouldn't be linking to someone
>>>>>> else's information somewhere.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> It makes me cringe a bit when I hear it, but it has been suggested
>>>>>> that libraries are the logical organizations to take on the
>>>> archiving
>>>>>> and perhaps even maintenance of key ontologies. I know we don't
>>>>>> have the funding for that and I am reminded of the poster that
>> read:
>>>> "What
>>>>>> if schools were fully funded and the military had to hold a bake
>>>> sale
>>>>>> to buy an airplane?"
>>>>>>
>>>>>> So I agree, Nate, with your assessment -- that we can't risk using
>>>>>> ontologies that can change arbitrarily. But we could potentially
>>>>>> become partners in those ontologies, just as libraries from
>>>> different
>>>>>> countries have become partners in MARC21 and BIBFRAME. Dividing
>> the
>>>>>> world at libraries/not-libraries is the problem. Well, the crux of
>>>>>> the problem is that we'd have to hold a bake sale to get the $$
>> and
>>>>>> staffing to be participants, and even that wouldn't cover it.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> *aaaarrrrggghhh!*
>>>>>>
>>>>>> kc
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 5/23/13 8:39 AM, Trail, Nate wrote:
>>>>>>> If you adopt someone else's terms, you are stuck with their
>>>>>> definitions, and if they decide to change them, you have to
>> revisit
>>>>>> your decision: a constant maintenance headache.
>>>>>>> The foaf vocab is in Testing status, version 0.98. Are they going
>>>> to
>>>>>> change it before it comes out? Who knows? Will they add something
>>>>>> better like foaf:sortName that is more like a traditional library
>>>>>> listing?
>>>>>>> Just coming up with a list of all the possible terms out there
>> and
>>>>>> fighting over whether they are close enough to use for each term
>> we
>>>>>> have will be a major use of time.
>>>>>>> On DC, people you might not be for it, but if we opened the BF
>>>> vocab
>>>>>> up, there might be a lot of clamor for it; it's so simple and it's
>>>>>> all over the place!
>>>>>>> Nate
>>>>>>> PS I had a good laugh about the Unicode and ISO 639 "roll our own
>>>>>> comment". I'm working right now on developing a computer that uses
>>>> 2s
>>>>>> and 3s instead of 1s and 0s.
>>>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>>>> From: stuart yeates [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>>>>>>> Sent: Wednesday, May 22, 2013 5:31 PM
>>>>>>> To: Bibliographic Framework Transition Initiative Forum
>>>>>>> Cc: Trail, Nate
>>>>>>> Subject: Re: [BIBFRAME] re-using existing properties (was
>>>>>>> http://bibframe.org/documentation/bibframe-authority/ and the
>>>>>>> "lightweight abstraction layer")
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On 23/05/13 05:25, Trail, Nate wrote:
>>>>>>>> I think when you start reusing existing properties, you're
>>>>>>>> relying
>>>>>> on
>>>>>>>> them being around for the long haul, and requiring systems that
>>>>>>>> consume them to be aware of all the multiple namespaces.
>>>>>>> The "syntactic sugar" option used by
>>>>>> madsrdf:hasCloseExternalAuthority does not introduce a new
>>>>>> namespace from the users' point of view. The syntactic sugar can
>>>>>> even be kept in a separate RDF file from the definition of the
>>>>>> bibframe properties, making it second class and invisible to
>>>>>> everyone who
>>>> doesn't want it.
>>>>>>> > In all cases, I can't
>>>>>>> > see us (the library community) agreeing that the way foaf
>> or
>>>> dc
>>>>>> (or > whatever) uses a term really matches what we're talking
>>>> about.
>>>>>>> Following that arguement we should also walk away from ISO 639,
>>>>>>> ISO
>>>>>> 3166, RFC 3986, Unicode and so forth. None of them are perfect
>> from
>>>> a
>>>>>> library point of view but all of the are better than rolling our
>>>> own.
>>>>>>> [For the record I'm not suggestion using dc / Dublincore.]
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> cheers
>>>>>>> stuart
>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>> Stuart Yeates
>>>>>>> Library Technology Services http://www.victoria.ac.nz/library/
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Karen Coyle
>>>>>> [log in to unmask] http://kcoyle.net
>>>>>> ph: 1-510-540-7596
>>>>>> m: 1-510-435-8234
>>>>>> skype: kcoylenet
>>>> --
>>>> Karen Coyle
>>>> [log in to unmask] http://kcoyle.net
>>>> ph: 1-510-540-7596
>>>> m: 1-510-435-8234
>>>> skype: kcoylenet
>>
>> --
>> Karen Coyle
>> [log in to unmask] http://kcoyle.net
>> ph: 1-510-540-7596
>> m: 1-510-435-8234
>> skype: kcoylenet
>>
>
--
Karen Coyle
[log in to unmask] http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet
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