Thanks, Ben, this is what I suspected and it is good to get a confirmation.
I've been doing a lot of work under the Dublin Core auspices lately and I've become very aware of the difference between a vocabulary developed for a specific application and a vocabulary developed for general use. Think of the RDA "unconstrained" but possibly even more unconstrained.
The LoC relators could be useful to lots of communities if there were an unconstrained version that was not specific to BIBFRAME classes and that allowed string values as well as IRIs. At DC we talk about "minimal semantic commitment" for base vocabularies with the "commitment" taking place in application profiles.
Now, obviously, LoC is developing for its own needs and isn't obligated to manage its vocabularies for other uses. But it would be great if we had more unconstrained lists, and if there were a site to maintain them. DC does what it can but of course has limited resources.
Thanks again, kc On 10/10/23 9:30 AM, Companjen, B.A. (Ben) wrote:
Hi Karen, I have been surprised by how RDF and reasoning combine, and hopefully I now know enough to give a "reasonable" answer. Looking at the role contributor, it is asserted to be a subproperty of dc:contributor (from the DC Elements, not the Terms). It is also asserted to be an OWL ObjectProperty. Finally there is an assertion that contributor is a BIBFRAME Role. You are correct that these assertions combine with AND. They are "just" assertions and whether there is an inconsistency or error depends on what (kind of) logic and other knowledge you use. For a long time I assumed that something could not be a SKOS Concept and an RDFS Property, but SKOS does not impose such a limitation. So even if it feels wrong, I think a relator may be a rdfs:Property (implied by rdfs:subPropertyOf and owl:ObjectProperty) and a bf:Role. When you use http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/ctb as a predicate and the object in the triple is a literal (such as a string), I think an OWL reasoner may find an inconsistency: owl:ObjectProperty implies that the object should be an individual, which a literal is not. However, without testing this, a reasoner may also infer that there is another individual that it doesn't know of. That is the open world assumption that makes OWL less suitable (or harder to use) as a constraint language. Without looking into the BIBFRAME model, I think bf:Role is the class of "things" that can qualify how agents are involved in activities (similar to how the Provenance Ontology uses Role<https://www.w3.org/TR/2013/NOTE-prov-primer-20130430/#roles> to link activities to entities and activities and agents). I hope this helps! Regards, Ben Ben Companjen Research Software and Data Engineer / Digital Scholarship Librarian Centre for Digital Scholarship Leiden University Libraries (UBL) Tel: +31634556900 Post: Postbus 9501, 2300 RA Leiden E-mail: b.a.compan...@library.leidenuniv.nl<mailto:b.a.compan...@library.leidenuniv.nl> Web: https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/ben-companjen From: Code for Libraries <CODE4LIB@LISTS.CLIR.ORG> on behalf of Karen Coyle <li...@kcoyle.net> Date: Monday, 9 October 2023 at 23:36 To: CODE4LIB@LISTS.CLIR.ORG <CODE4LIB@LISTS.CLIR.ORG> Subject: [CODE4LIB] Question about multiple declarations All, I am looking at the LoC relators at id.loc.gov, and am trying to understand the implications of the multiple declarations for relator terms. <rdfs:subPropertyOf rdf:resource="https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fpurl.org%2Fdc%2Felements%2F1.1%2Fcontributor%2522%2F&data=05%7C01%7Cb.a.companjen%40LIBRARY.LEIDENUNIV.NL%7C401c41924b284606a8a308dbc90fca8b%7Cca2a7f76dbd74ec091086b3d524fb7c8%7C0%7C0%7C638324841896567069%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=Oq7kbkRMlOTj9PV2ad5LvC%2Fc0pAAQIHdZ3yzntmZQEU%3D&reserved=0<http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/contributor%22/>> <rdf:type rdf:resource="https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2002%2F07%2Fowl%23ObjectProperty%2522%2F&data=05%7C01%7Cb.a.companjen%40LIBRARY.LEIDENUNIV.NL%7C401c41924b284606a8a308dbc90fca8b%7Cca2a7f76dbd74ec091086b3d524fb7c8%7C0%7C0%7C638324841896567069%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=ihZdG%2FAhEV559bwlXHatGmu4ajLElokdV0Yhc9DQ0k0%3D&reserved=0<http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#ObjectProperty%22/>> <rdf:type rdf:resource="https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fid.loc.gov%2Fontologies%2Fbibframe%2FRole%2522%2F&data=05%7C01%7Cb.a.companjen%40LIBRARY.LEIDENUNIV.NL%7C401c41924b284606a8a308dbc90fca8b%7Cca2a7f76dbd74ec091086b3d524fb7c8%7C0%7C0%7C638324841896567069%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=g%2B8punPd1L3pZMQqU0mjU6%2FZ%2Br6PCq0c1W22Fuyyww4%3D&reserved=0<http://id.loc.gov/ontologies/bibframe/Role%22/>> dct:contributor is not an Object Property; there is no object type given, so I suppose it is de facto an Annotation Property. I read the next statement as narrowing, so at statement 2 we have: subproperty of dct:contributor AND an owl:ObjectProperty If my reading is correct, it would be a violation of this to use the relator with a string rather than a thing. (Stop me here if I'm wrong.) Then the 3rd statement appears to say that the relator is a bf:Role, which is a BIBFRAME-specific class. I can't wrap my head around the functionality of this statement and would love a brief explanation. I'm undoubtedly not into BIBFRAME deep enough to grok this. Also, my reading is that each relator is ALL THREE OF THESE; this is an AND not at OR. Right? Thanks for any help, kc -- Karen Coyle kco...@kcoyle.net https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fkcoyle.net%2F&data=05%7C01%7Cb.a.companjen%40LIBRARY.LEIDENUNIV.NL%7C401c41924b284606a8a308dbc90fca8b%7Cca2a7f76dbd74ec091086b3d524fb7c8%7C0%7C0%7C638324841896567069%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=BWJ%2FM1FFCN%2FeFKfReR0L%2FiWzZgbkH2uM9jE%2FFA33Lds%3D&reserved=0<http://kcoyle.net/> m: +1-510-435-8234 skype: kcoylenet/+1-510-984-3600
-- Karen Coyle kco...@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
