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On Nov 10, 2011, at 10:33 , Bernhard Eversberg wrote:

> Am 10.11.2011 09:41, schrieb Ivan Herman:
>>>> 
>>>> ... However, I would be very pleased to provide
>>>> feedback, whenever that is necessary, on specific, Semantic Web
>>>> related technical questions concerning the intricacies of RDF,
>>>> OWL, SKOS, or SPARQL.
> 
> Are these the tools or cornerstones of the Semantic Web, and nothing
> else besides?

Cornerstones: yes. Nothing else: no. This is an evolving area, and I expect new technologies and approaches to appear that a larger 'Web of Data' should work with in some way or other...


> There are some projects that have published library data
> in RDF; do you know of promising applications based on these?
> 

For me, the boundaries are blurred, I must admit. To take one example, the URI-s provided by the LC for their authorities provide a fixed and stable reference for a number of subjects that people use to annotate, say, their bibliographic entries but also other online documents. Entry points like these to the cataloguing world would become an essential element for a number of applications. Projects on cultural heritage, to take another area, that has become really important in the past few years (eg, the Europeana project) would/should/could also rely on such references.

Tom Baker or Dan Brickley (cc-d) are more familiar with these areas, they may have more specific examples.

> The goal of this Transition Initiative is, first and foremost, to
> find a successor to the now 40 years old MARC bibliographic record
> format. This format or its future successor is, however, nothing that
> would have to be openly exposed on the web or used for communication
> with end-users. Appropriate web services should be able to deliver
> data in whatever form web applications may need it. Much in the way
> of this might be done right now, if only the database engines were
> open enough to allow for easy contruction of services; mostly, they
> are proprietary commercial software packages.
> 
> Could you name a few functions for library data on the web which you
> would give a high priority? A lot of functionality is conceivable, so
> we could use ideas about priorities.

Wow. I cannot necessarily describe that in terms of explicit functions. But... I would like to have an easy way to access library catalogues all over the world, to find the most up-to-date information on, say, Bach's Hohe Messe (to take a non-book example). Using Linked Data, I should be able, actually, to _integrate_ that various data on that work that is around the globe, including the list of recordings, maybe the reviews, etc. Much of this type of data is in libraries already but, today, the only source people have is to go to, say, Wikipedia (or its RDF dump, DBPedia) and similar sites. Lots of information are missing out today.

Of course, if the digital data is also available, then a reference to that is also of a great value (although I am aware that this is bound to access control issue).

Mind you: this is my personal opinion. Others in the community may have other priorities...


> 
> You are aware that we have millions of legacy data with all sorts
> of limitations, and no way to get rid of these...
> 

Of course. I would expect some sort of a translation service, so to say. You may know that there is a work going on mapping RDB-s to RDF; essentially, providing some sort of an on-the-fly translation, at least in some cases, to SQL data but seen through an RDF goggle. Maybe something similar is conceivable for that legacy data, but I may be optimistic...

Cheers

Ivan


> B.Eversberg


----
Ivan Herman, W3C Semantic Web Activity Lead
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