Intuitive and actually time saving interfaces are definitely needed to create good linked data. The most basic level would be type-ahead support against the labels of resources known to the system, but beyond that you would still need a way to determine which of the many "Ken Smith"s to use, if any. Some smarts are needed to, for example, check that the dates are possible, that the domain is similar, and so forth to rank them appropriately. Then it would need to present the known information about the people to the cataloguer so they can select one, or create a new entry. So needless to say, a lot of research, design and development work needs to take place before there will be any time savings gained by using linked data as a replacement for existing such systems. Rob On Tue, Jan 20, 2015 at 9:27 AM, Bowers, Kate A. <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > One of the problems with making all relationships "URI" is that this is > hugely time-consuming. Keying "Ken Smith, producer; Joe Jones, director; > Emily Simms, presenter" is easy. Finding a record for "Ken Smith" if one > doesn't already exist? Impossible level of work. We need to be able to > say things in strings because we cannot possibly make all the metadata into > data. Only for "traced" headings would this be possible, and we don't > typically trace these all these pieces of data. > > Kate > > Kate Bowers > Collections Services Archivist for Metadata, Systems, and Standards > Harvard University Archives > [log in to unmask] > 617.496.2713 > voice: (617) 384-7787 > fax: (617) 495-8011 > web: http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.eresource:archives > Twitter: @k8_bowers > > -- Rob Sanderson Information Standards Advocate Digital Library Systems and Services Stanford, CA 94305