Well, there are "events," as Object Oriented programming constructs†, and
there are "events," as theoretical elements introduced to describe
physical phenomena and psychological processes.

According to that "Event Cognition" book referenced previously, the
historical precursors of the second meaning of the term originate with
Kant, were elaborated upon by Gestalt psychologists and Neobehaviorists,
and are presently central to work in cognitive psychology.

Event concepts are useful in distinguishing *episodic memory* from
*semantic memory* in real human minds/brains: "The episodic-semantic
distinction makes a special role for representation of
personally-experienced events in long-term memory … We propose that when
people think about events, semantic knowledge in the form of event
schemata interacts with episodic representation of events."††

Cognitive psychologists propose that episodic and semantic memory are
managed by separate neural systems. Perhaps you think that this may not
apply to Cultural Heritage resource description. Following the authors’
line of reasoning, a Describing Party’s experience of cataloging a
resource - especially where judgment is required to identify titles,
authors, and selecting subject terms – would be coded up within an
episodic memory framework.

The author, title, and subject term information generated by the
Describing Party during the “cataloging process” becomes a semantic memory
for the Describing Party, and can be usefully copied out to an information
management system. Note that for the resource description event to take
place at all, semantic memory (AACR2 RDA, etc.,) has to be brought to bear
– from the describer’s memory or from an information system, and used in a
reasoning process. (Note that “The Battle of Hastings” and “Arcadia
Publishing, Inc.” would have to come from operations on different
memory/knowledge structures – even though they must connect at that single
point.)

When Berners-Lee et al. began speaking of a Semantic Web, and when
Object-Oriented programming enthusiasts began introducing event concepts
into FRBR and other resource description schemes, my impression is that
they were addressing some attractive IT system design issues that may be
generally useful.

They were not engaging in considerations of how parties who host varying
points of view on socially-designated information-bearing artifacts (whose
creation may or may not be of interest to the describing parties):

* Can draw upon what they know from semantic memory
* Can reason out during a resource description event
* And what episodic and semantic features of a resource description
event they can then choose to document.

That’s our job. What I think is that the full implications of “semantic"
and “event” implementation choices become apparent in fields where
lightweight resource descriptions no longer suffice. To invoke “semantic"
is necessarily to evoke a framing cognitive psychology model of a type
similar to the one cited above. This model conveniently brings with an
“event” model which should suit our purposes.

Ron Murray



†† Radvansky, Gabriel A., and Jeffrey M. Zacks. 2014. Event cognition.
Oxford: Oxford University Press. P.7



---------------------------------

On 1/23/16, 1:08 PM, "Martynas Jusevičius" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Hey James,
>
>again, why should events even be in scope of the bibliographical
>domain? Secondly, MARC is not part of the Linked Data picture.
>
>In general, I think the answer can be only as specific as: "it
>depends". Mostly on usage.
>
>If you know that a book is about "United States--History--Civil War,
>1861-1865", then the only thing you can state in RDF with certainty
>is:
>
> _:book dct:subject [ dct:title "United States--History--Civil War,
>1861-1865" ] .
>
>In other words, this book is about something with this title. I've
>used blank nodes and Dublin Core properties here, but they could also
>be URIs and properties from a different vocabulary.
>
>Now maybe someone else has minted a URI for your subject concept, e.g.
>DBPedia. Then you can state instead:
>
> _:book dct:subject <http://dbpedia.org/resource/American_Civil_War> .
>
>If you dereference DBPedia's URI, you will find RDF types such as
>dbo:Event. At this point your book is explicitly about the US Civil
>War, in a distributed Linked Data context.
>
>Notice that no BIBFRAME specific properties or classes were necessary
>to state that fact.
>
>P.S. URI itself is not "the thing", it only *identifies* "the thing".
>
>
>Martynas
>
>On Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 5:58 PM, James Weinheimer
><[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> On 1/23/2016 2:24 AM, Martynas Jusevičius wrote:
>>>
>>> I encourage participants of this list to watch the following
>>> presentation by Robert Sanderson before diving into philosophical
>>> discussions about events in spacetime:
>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-U-Qd37WgE
>>
>>
>> Thanks for that. Very interesting.
>>
>> The discussion about reuse is at:
>>https://youtu.be/2-U-Qd37WgE?t=31m26s, and
>> I agree that if you want developers to include your information (which
>>is
>> the idea of linked data), it is necessary to reuse code whenever
>>possible.
>> Otherwise, you are creating a huge additional hurdle for the developers
>>and
>> many will choose not to include your information in any tools they
>>create.
>>
>> Of course, the problem with using other codes is that you end up stuck
>>in
>> certain ways if they define things differently than you do. So, that is
>>why
>> in my previous message I gave the definitions of "event" as used in
>>other
>> implementations. None of them use anything that is similar to any
>>library
>> usage. Therefore, if we are to make something that will be useful and
>>valid
>> in an "events" semantic system created by somebody else, we have to
>>decide
>> how to index our information to match others' ideas of events.
>>
>> If an event is seen only as a meeting of people, then in addition to the
>> 111s, there will also be many, but far from all, 110s (e.g. 110 2_
>>|a
>> Air Traffic Control Association. |b Annual Meeting |n (22nd : |d 1977 :
>>|c
>> Las Vegas, Nev.)) and even many 151/110 jurisdictional names (e.g. 110
>> 10 |a United States. |b Congress |n (101st : |d 1989-1990))
>>
>> If an event is supposed to cover other "things that happen" caused by
>>humans
>> such as wars and battles or events caused by non-humans, the new index
>>will
>> need to include some, but not all, 150s (150 __ |a Hurricane Katrina,
>>2005)
>> and 151s (151 __ |a United States |x History |y Civil War,
>>1861-1865).
>>
>> With subjects, there is the additional complexity that there are
>> subdivisions, e.g. the subject "United States--History--Civil War,
>> 1861-1865--Bibliography". Would this still be considered an event?
>>
>> If not, there is the URI for this subject, which includes the entire
>>string.
>> http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2007100437.html. Would this
>>entire
>> URI still be considered an event? If not, how would it work vis-a-vis
>>the
>> URI for "United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865"?
>>
>> Many others view events as individual performances as for instance, when
>> someone wants to buy or sell tickets to a musical concert. Libraries
>>don't
>> code to this level and you need to look at the entire record for
>>individual
>> performance information.
>>
>> No matter what, it sounds like adding "event" would mean a major change
>>for
>> our current data.
>>
>> James Weinheimer [log in to unmask]
>> First Thus http://blog.jweinheimer.net
>> First Thus Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/FirstThus
>> Personal Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/james.weinheimer.35
>> Google+ https://plus.google.com/u/0/+JamesWeinheimer
>> Cooperative Cataloging Rules
>> http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/
>> Cataloging Matters Podcasts
>> http://blog.jweinheimer.net/cataloging-matters-podcasts
>> The Library Herald http://libnews.jweinheimer.net/
>>
>> [delay +30 days]