From my perspective, all we're talking about is using the same URI to
refer to the same format(s) accross the library community standards this
community generally can control.
That will make things much easier for developers, especially but not
only when building software that interacts with more than one of these
standards (as client or server).
Now, once you've done that, you've ALSO set the stage for that kind of
RDF scenario, among other RDF scenarios. I agree with Mike that that
particular scenario is unlikely, but once you set the stage for RDF
experimentation like that, if folks are interested in experimenting (and
many in our community are), maybe something more attractively useful
will come out of it.
Or maybe not. Either way, you've made things easier and more
inter-operable just by using the same set of URIs across multiple
standards to refer to the same thing. So, yeah, I'd still focus on that,
rather than any kind of 'cross walk', RDF or not. It's the actual use
case in front of us, in which the benefit will definitely be worth the
effort (if the effort is kept manageable by avoiding trying to solve the
entire universe of problems at once).
Jonathan
Mike Taylor wrote:
So what are we talking about here? A situation where an SRU server
receives a request for response records to be delivered in a
particular format, it doesn't recognise the format URI, so it goes and
looks it up in an RDF database and discovers that it's equivalent to a
URI that it does know? Hmm ... it's crazy, but it might just work.
I bet no-one does it, though.
_/|_ ___________________________________________________________________
/o ) \/ Mike Taylor <m...@indexdata.com> http://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\ "Someday, I'll show you around monster-free Tokyo" -- dialogue
from "Gamera: Guardian of the Universe"
Peter Noerr writes:
> I agree with Ross wholeheartedly. Particularly in the use of an RDF based
mechanism to describe, and then have systems act on, the semantics of these
uniquely identified objects. Semantics (as in Web) has been exercising my thoughts
recently and the problems we have here are writ large over all the SW people are
trying to achieve. Perhaps we can help...
>
> Peter
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Code for Libraries [mailto:code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of
> > Ross Singer
> > Sent: Friday, May 01, 2009 13:40
> > To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> > Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] One Data Format Identifier (and Registry) to Rule
> > Them All
> >
> > Ideally, though, if we have some buy in and extend this outside our
> > communities, future identifiers *should* have fewer variations, since
> > people can find the appropriate URI for the format and use that.
> >
> > I readily admit that this is wishful thinking, but so be it. I do
> > think that modeling it as SKOS/RDF at least would make it attractive
> > to the Linked Data/Semweb crowd who are likely the sorts of people
> > that would be interested in seeing URIs, anyway.
> >
> > I mean, the worst that can happen is that nobody cares, right?
> >
> > -Ross.
> >
> > On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 3:41 PM, Peter Noerr <pno...@museglobal.com> wrote:
> > > I am pleased to disagree to various levels of 'strongly" (if we can agree
> > on a definition for it :-).
> > >
> > > Ross earlier gave a sample of a "crossw3alk' for my MARC problem. What he
> > supplied
> > >
> > > -----snip
> > > We could have something like:
> > > <http://purl.org/DataFormat/marcxml>
> > > . <skos:prefLabel> "MARC21 XML" .
> > > . <skos:notation> "info:srw/schema/1/marcxml-v1.1" .
> > > . <skos:notation> "info:ofi/fmt:xml:xsd:MARC21" .
> > > . <skos:notation> "http://www.loc.gov/MARC21/slim"; .
> > > . <skos:broader> http://purl.org/DataFormat/marc .
> > > . <skos:description> "..." .
> > >
> > > Or maybe those skos:notations should be owl:sameAs -- anyway, that's not
> > really the point. The point is that all of these various identifiers would
> > be valid, but we'd have a real way of knowing what they actually mean.
> > Maybe this is what you mean by a crosswalk.
> > > ------end
> > >
> > > Is exactly what I meant by a "crosswalk". Basically a translating
> > dictionary which allows any entity (system or person) to relate the various
> > identifiers.
> > >
> > > I would love to see a single unified set of identifiers, my life as a
> > wrangled of record semantics would be soooo much easier. But I don't see it
> > happening.
> > >
> > > That does not mean we should not try. Even a unification in our space
> > (and "if not in the library/information space, then where?" as Mike said)
> > reduces the larger problem. However I don't believe it is a scalable
> > solution (which may not matter if all of a group of users agree, they why
> > not leave them to it) as, at any time one group/organisation/person/system
> > could introduce a new scheme, and a world view which relies on unified
> > semantics would no longer be viable.
> > >
> > > Which means until global unification on an object (better a (large) set
> > of objects) is achieved it will be necessary to have the translating
> > dictionary and systems which know how to use it. Unification reduces Ray's
> > list of 15 alternative uris to 14 or 13 or whatever. As long as that number
> > is >1 translation will be necessary. (I will leave aside discussions of
> > massive record bloat, continual system re-writes, the politics of whose
> > view prevails, the unhelpfulness of compromises for joint solutions, and so
> > on.)
> > >
> > > Peter
> > >
> > >> -----Original Message-----
> > >> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of
> > >> Mike Taylor
> > >> Sent: Friday, May 01, 2009 02:36
> > >> To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> > >> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] One Data Format Identifier (and Registry) to
> > Rule
> > >> Them All
> > >>
> > >> Jonathan Rochkind writes:
> > >> > Crosswalk is exactly the wrong answer for this. Two very small
> > >> > overlapping communities of most library developers can surely agree
> > >> > on using the same identifiers, and then we make things easier for
> > >> > US. We don't need to solve the entire universe of problems. Solve
> > >> > the simple problem in front of you in the simplest way that could
> > >> > possibly work and still leave room for future expansion and
> > >> > improvement. From that, we learn how to solve the big problems,
> > >> > when we're ready. Overreach and try to solve the huge problem
> > >> > including every possible use case, many of which don't apply to you
> > >> > but SOMEDAY MIGHT... and you end up with the kind of
> > >> > over-abstracted over-engineered
> > >> > too-complicated-to-actually-catch-on solutions that... we in the
> > >> > library community normally end up with.
> > >>
> > >> I strongly, STRONGLY agree with this. It's exactly what I was about
> > >> to write myself, in response to Peter's message, until I saw that
> > >> Jonathan had saved me the trouble :-) Let's solve the problem that's
> > >> in front of us right now: bring SRU into harmony with OpenURL in this
> > >> respect, and the very act of doing so will lend extra legitimacy to
> > >> the agreed-on identifiers, which will then be more strongly positioned
> > >> as The Right Identifiers for other initiatives to use.
> > >>
> > >> _/|_
> > ___________________________________________________________________
> > >> /o ) \/ Mike Taylor <m...@indexdata.com>
> > >> http://www.miketaylor.org.uk
> > >> )_v__/\ "You cannot really appreciate Dilbert unless you've read it in
> > >> the original Klingon." -- Klingon Programming Mantra
> > >
