I recently read an article by Matt Enis written on April 10, 2014 which appeared below.
http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2014/04/ils/putting-pieces-together-library-systems-landscape/
There is a section in it that sheds some light on the issue being discussed. For convenience, I am reproducing that section below in italics. The highlighting in red is mine.
Semantic web
Linked data has been a buzzword for quite some time, and, in 2013, VTLS leveraged its expertise in automation, digital asset management, FRBR, RDA, Bibframe, and Drupal design consulting to help the Kansas City Public Library, MO, launch the first of several planned microsites: “The Missouri-Kansas Conflict: Civil War on the Western Border.” At first glance, it appears to be a local history site, albeit a very well-designed one, with an unusually large collection of thousands of scanned documents from more than 25 institutions relating to the history of conflict over the Missouri-Kansas border before and during the U.S. Civil War.
But dig deeper, and librarians will soon find what the linked data and RDA buzz is all about. Options to explore this extensive collection include a map, a time line, and a digital gallery, but the dynamic relationship viewer is the real showstopper. In many cases, clicking on someone’s name will bring up a visual interface highlighting battles that the person fought in, regiments, organizations, or other people that he or she was affiliated with, and more. Users can either browse from affiliation to affiliation, which in turn continues to open up more visual browsing options, or click on the links between to check out the digitally preserved items that document these affiliations. The entire system operates with the catalog.
“When you are in your catalog, and you click on something, you can see a visual, semantic web–type display of the content, showing all of its links,” explains Vinod Chachra, president and CEO of VTLS. “You can keep browsing through this linked data display. When you hit the focal point of the node, you go back to the catalog display at the point you [initially] clicked on to go to the visual display. The visual display and the catalog are interchangeably connected.”
Vinod Chachra, PhD
President President & CEO
VTLS Inc.
540-557-1200
-----Original Message-----
From: Bibliographic Framework Transition Initiative Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Vladimir Skvortsov
Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2014 5:50 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [BIBFRAME] Question
Dear colleagues,
Let me ask a naïve question. What is the purpose of publishing library catalogues as Linked Data?
Most often answer I met: the purpose is to make library catalogues accessible to Internet search engines like Google, Yandex, Yahoo, Bing etc.
But, first, in fact it could be achieved without RDF and Linked Data as well, and second, there is a doubt that new library namespaces, as they are
presented, approach library catalogues to that purpose.
Actually for search engines (and browsers) to understand and interpret new terms correctly, strong formal relationships should be established between terms from library namespaces and standard ones, i. e. terms accepted as
standard by W3C and main search engine and browser creators. Otherwise
library metadata could be understandable only to library-specific software.
That draws us back to isolated catalogues.
If our purpose is different, that is to include library catalogues into global knowledge system being organized as Linked Data - which seems more appropriate task - in this case we also can not achieve our purpose without establishing relations to standard terms.
Unfortunately I could not find such relations in BIBFRAME vocabularies.
So what is the purpose of BIBFRAME project, as an instance, from this point of view?
I would greatly appreciate if anyone clarify the situation.