Quoting Simon Spero <s...@unc.edu>:
On Thu, Dec 8, 2011 at 12:16 PM, Richard Wallis
<richard.wal...@talis.com>wrote:
*A record is a silo within a silo*
* *
A record within a catalogue duplicates the
publisher/author/subject/etc.information stored in adjacent records
describing items by the same
author/publisher/etc. This community spends much of it's effort on
the best ways to index and represent this duplication to make records
accessible. Ideally an author, for instance, should be
described [preferably only once] and then related to all the items they
produced
I would argue that this analysis of the nature of what it is to be a
record is incomplete, and that a more nuanced analysis sheds light on some
of the theoretical and practical problems that came up during the BL Linked
Data meeting.
From a logical point of view, a bibliographic record can seen as a theory -
that is to say a consistent set of statements. There may be records
describing the same thing, but the theories they represent need not be
consistent with the statements in the first collection. The record is the
context in which these statements are made.
I think there is a big difference between the "database view" (store
each unique thing only once and re-use it), the creation view, and
what you do with data in applications. "Records" may be temporary
constructs responding to a particular application need or user query.
In terms of library data, a cataloger will appear to be creating a
complete description (however that is defined); that description will
look logically like a record, and it will need to look like that so
that the cataloger can decide when it is complete. In response to
queries, the ability to produce different records from the same data
has some interesting possibilities because it allows for different
"views" to be created based on the nature of the query. A geographic
view would show resources on a map; an author view would show
resources related to people; a topical view could be a topic map. At
the individual resource level, what is included in the resource
display ("record") could be different for each of those views.
kc
An example of where the removal of context leads to problems can be seen
by considering the case of a Document to which FAST headings are assigned
by two different catalogers, each of whom has a different opinion as to the
primary subject of the Work. Each "facet" is a separate statement within
the each theory; each theory may represent a coherent view of the subject,
yet the direct combination of the two theories may entail statements that
neither indexer believes true.
The are also performance benefits that arise from admitting records into
one's ontology; a great deal of metalogical information, especially that
for provenance, is necessarily identical for all statements made within the
same theory; all the statements share the same utterer, and the statements
were made at the same time. Instead of repeating this metalogical
information for every single statement, provenance information can be
maintained and reasoned over just once.
Simon
--
Karen Coyle
kco...@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet
