Dear Thomas,

I don't know if what follows is helpful or clarifying, but I am still trying to tease out if not the use cases then at least if there are misunderstandings/miscommunication (on all of our parts).

Treating "Provider" as an "Event" would be an improvement, but the proposal is actually to do away with the anonymous subgraph (the Provider or Event resource) altogether. And, in reading your email, I found myself wanting to ask:

Do you (and the community in general) believe we are, or should be, describing /events/ or /manifestations/?

I see it as the latter (describing manifestations), so I feel capturing events as little-used anonymous subgraphs is an over-complication.

I completely acknowledge the feasibility to an Event-based approach to publication, manufacturing, producing, etc but would we be modelling these as events in the interest of some kind of semantic purity? I also think that, given the proposal, if you wanted to /extract/ information from bf:Instances and re-model them as Events, then that is entirely possible also.

So, to use you example of:

> The manufacture of 1000 copies of book X and that of
> 2000 copies of book Y always are distinct events (even when they happen in
> the same shop at the same time).

These would be two distinct instances:

<http://example.org/book/X> a bf:Instance,
bf:manufacturedBy [ a bf:Organization ; bf:label "Manufacturer1" ] ;
bf:manufacturedAt [ a bf:Place ; bf:label "London" ] ;
bf:manufacturedOn "1966" .

<http://example.org/book/Y> a bf:Instance,
bf:manufacturedBy [ a bf:Organization ; bf:label "Manufacturer1" ] ;
bf:manufacturedAt [ a bf:Place ; bf:label "London" ] ;
bf:manufacturedOn "1966" ;

It would be possible to create an Event resource for this example, and unambiguously identify it, but I think most of these types of Events would be included as anonymous subgraphs (which you're email hints at) with little overall benefit. Even if they are identified by HTTP URI, then I am still hard-pressed to think of a use case that is not addressable via the current proposal and a simple SPARQL query.

To put that another way: I'm primarily interested in balancing complication with use case in conjunction with the model. If a bf:Instance is a manifestation of something /and/ the use case is to /link/ to one type of "event" (publication, manufacture, production, distribution) per bf:Instance, /while/ being able to query for all the things, for example, manufactured by Manufacturer1 in London in 1966, then the proposal seems to accommodate that criteria.

That's not to discount your thoughts about this, but to (hopefully) better explain where the proposal is coming from. Does this impact your thinking any?

Anyways, I wanted to conclude with a comment and a question about this:

> And (anonymous) subgraphs to my knowledge are the best and usually only
> way to model a non-trivial data structure like needed for "events"
> in RDF. Trying to flatten that out for some typical library situations IMHO just
> conceals the general mechanics and - as this discussion has shown so far -
> introduces a bunch of new problems.

I've seen a few issues raised about this proposal, but I'm not sure I've seen an issue that invalidates it. If, however, there is an issue, I feel it is a general desire to attach multiple same-type events to one bf:Instance. The example I've seen is with reprints, where the 'original' was published in 2005 and a reprint issued in 2007 for example. There is a desire to /not/ create another bf:Instance for the reprint (and link the one bf:Instance to the other) but to relate the first Instance to a /second event/ (the reprint event). That's one way to approach the modelling of reprints, but it does not align with BF model in its current state, which assumes a manifestation is the result of at least one of the following events: production, manufacture, distribution, and publication. (A bf:Instance may be the product of multiple events but they should not be of the same-type.) Is your disagreement (assuming you do disagree) with the fact that multiple same-type events cannot be associated with a single Instance (without it becoming super confusing)?

Warmly,
Kevin



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bibliographic Framework Transition Initiative Forum
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Thomas Berger
> Sent: Friday, August 01, 2014 5:35 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [BIBFRAME] Proposal to handle "Providers" differently
>
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> Hash: SHA1
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>
>
> Am 01.08.2014 09:36, schrieb [log in to unmask]:
> > I'm not sure how I can understand this. From my non-cataloger
> > perspective, I understand you see a manifestation/instance that is
> > published "once". But this is just a monographic publication. What about
> others?
> >
> > There are many events in the lifecycle of a work that describe the
> > process of "putting the work to the public", such as
> >
> ...
> >
> > Many of this events are essential to library service systems which
> > have to determine if the work is available (for purchase, for
> > licensing, for cataloging, for reference, for circulation, for inter
> > library loan etc.)
>
> And when you leave the domain of published text material many more
> events are relevant on different levels:
>
> - - (first) broadcasting of a TV piece (I remember a regional bibliography
> in austria which routinely covers these, because some formats include
> many interviews or portraits of persons of regional importance. Since
> not only the broadcasting firm but also the specific channel and program
> are relevant this could often be inherited from a bibliographic
> part/whole relationship as it might be done for articles in journals
> or newspapers)
>
> - - exact submission or approval dates for technical reports (by whom or
> to whom?)
>
> - - dates of reception (ingress?) for archival material, date of the post-stamp
> for letters
>
> - - date of first public display for works of art (this may well be an
> exhibition as an identifyable entity, or just "19xx by Gallery yz")
>
> I very much appreciate the shift from "Provider" to "Event" but I think this
> has to be kept quite general since Bibframe cannot prescribe what kinds of
> event a certain community deems important for specific materials (some
> examples above are connected to questions of copyright status and although
> outside of "bibliographic" questions may be of importance for "library
> operations").
>
> Any event seems to have dates or date ranges associated with it (from years
> down to the granularity of minutes or seconds), many also explicit places (as
> in cities or towns), and agents (corporate bodies typically).
>
> Especially for manufacturing or publication events I do not understand the
> concerns about re-use: The manufacture of 1000 copies of book X and that of
> 2000 copies of book Y always are distinct events (even when they happen in
> the same shop at the same time). We prefer to record only year granularity
> and therefore yield identical descriptions for the events, re-use however
> would imply they were the same event - that is not what we want to express
> (I hope).
>
> And (anonymous) subgraphs to my knowledge are the best and usually only
> way to model a non-trivial data structure like needed for "events"
> in RDF. Trying to flatten that out for some typical library situations IMHO just
> conceals the general mechanics and - as this discussion has shown so far -
> introduces a bunch of new problems.
>
> viele Gruesse
> Thomas Berger
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