Hi Steve,
On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 9:15 AM, Steve Bayliss
<[email protected]> wrote:
> Thinking on this some more from an identifiers perspective:
>
> [...]
> Cool URIs and Linked Data perspectives distinguish between identifiers that
> refer to a "thing" and identifiers that identify (eg) a web page describing
> the "thing", with both resolving to the same web page. Does a Fedora
> digital object identifier refer to what the URL resolves to, or is it a
> identifier for what the digital object represents? Probably the former (the
> object in the repository) - should there also be identifiers for the latter?
> Or is this nothing to do with Fedora per se, and down to implementors to
> determine for themselves?
I think it is safe to assume that a PID (or object URI) refers to a
particular Fedora digital object as an abstract entity. Where things
can get semantically muddy is when you use that same entity as a
stand-in for another entity, like a book. For example, when I make
statements where the subject is the digital object, am I really making
statements about the book or the Fedora object? In many cases, the
answer to that question can be implied by the predicate of a
particular statement. People do this all the time and don't think
twice about it.
But it would be nice to have a clear way of making the distinction.
In the past, I've thought it would be useful for people to have a
well-defined way (a particular predicate or object property) for
asserting inside the object what outside entity it is intended to
represent. But lately, quads seem to be the right way forward. If
the abstract model of the digital object is a graph (which,
conveniently, asserts its own name), the triples in that graph whose
subject is NOT the URI of that digital object can be about whatever we
want, and it can be clear.
Here's a relevant quote, and a really interesting piece about
ambiguity on the web/semweb if you haven't seen it yet:
"In practice, web architecture does not determine what any names,
including URIs, refer to. It only determines what they access."
- Harry Halpin and Patrick Hayes, "In Defense of Ambiguity"
http://www.ibiblio.org/hhalpin/homepage/publications/indefenseofambiguity.html
- Chris
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