No apologies required — your dissection of the (very important) differences between MODS and DCTERMS, both in concept and format, was extremely enlightening and helpful; as was all the other input.
Any misunderstandings are much more my fault for not being clearer when Ross asked what my use case was. I also made the mistake of referencing RDF, which I (now better) understand incorporates a whole universe of world-views that unnecessarily complicated things. Much learned, and as always, much obliged. MJ On 2010-05-04, at 3:48 PM, Corey Harper wrote: > Thank you for this clarification, MJ. I apologize for my initial reaction > that there was little value here. Knowing the use-case you define below, I > think there's a great deal of value. > > Beyond just the pragmatic short-term gains, I think a development like this > would help pin-point those areas where said schema functionally requires > semantics beyond those in the DCTERMS. All the better if some of those terms > just happen to be available in Bibliontology or some other namespace... > > Thanks again, > -Corey > > MJ Suhonos wrote: >>>> Let me give another example: the Open Library API returns a JSON tree, >>>> eg. http://openlibrary.org/books/OL1M.json >>>> >>>> But what schema is this? And if it doesn't conform to a standard schema, >>>> does that make it useless? If it were based on DCTERMS, at least I'd have >>>> a reference at http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/ to define the >>>> semantics being used (and an RDF namespace at http://purl.org/dc/terms/ >>>> to boot). >>> Ah, after my own heart! I have tried to convince the OL folks to translate >>> their data to dcterms, even did a crosswalk for them. Right now they're in >>> panic mode over a major milestone, but once that's over I may ping you to >>> make this request directly to them on one of their lists. If they only hear >>> it from me, it might just be a personal quirk of mine, right? >> See, we're on the same page after all. :-) >> Considering one of my primary use cases is direct interoperation with Open >> Library then yes, I'm all over it. I'll at least harass Edward and the OL >> list that DC output is important to others beyond just you alone. >> I was starting to get discouraged, but now I realize that many of you >> thought I was proposing DCTERMS as a replacement for MARC; not at all. >> Imagine Open Library's internal data schema being an easily-serializable >> model based on DCTERMS. Now imagine every library has a queryable API >> exactly like theirs. That's where I'm going, and I think (answering my own >> question above) that it *is* potentially useful. >>> p.s. The JSON API output doesn't require any programming when it uses their >>> data elements; it does do crosswalk to dcterms.... that's been the hangup. >>> Then again... their code is open source, the crosswalk I did is linked from >>> the launchpad entry here [1] so if anyone wants to contribute� >> Unfortunately I'm not adept at Python, so writing the code by hand is >> probably a bit beyond me at this point. But it might make a fun >> learn-Python-in-a-rainy-weekend project. >> MJ > > -- > Corey A Harper > Metadata Services Librarian > New York University Libraries > 20 Cooper Square, 3rd Floor > New York, NY 10003-7112 > 212.998.2479 > [email protected]
