On 28 March 2012 09:45, Karen Coyle <[email protected]> wrote: > On 3/27/12 10:06 PM, Ben Companjen wrote: > > This is the beginning of the discussion about RWO's vs. bibliographic > entities: > > http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg00076.html > > It's an ontological question - what is the entity that is being modeled? >
Ah, I read some of those messages. In the development of the RDF view of Open Library's data, that thread is important. As to what is being modeled: I believe in that thread it was decided (by George, supported by several contributors) that (at least) the RDF models people and organizations. But it helps to have some flag in the database saying "this is a person". > >>> As for using the VIAF ID rather than the individual ID, I'm not entirely >>> sure about that. As VIAF grows, individual library authority identifiers >>> can move from one cluster to another. The VIAF id identifies the >>> cluster, not the individual heading. >>> The cluster itself does not have a string to match against. >> >> >> I'm not entirely sure what you mean - my understanding of VIAF is that >> a VIAF ID identifies a person and that the underlying database >> connects IDs from the individual authority files. I don't know whether >> VIAF IDs are reused when one becomes obsolete (e.g. after a merge). > > > We may need to ask, but my understanding is that the VIAF ID identifies a > cluster of name authority statements that are considered to be for the same > entity. However, if you look at VIAF you often see more than one cluster for > the same entity. Presumably these will eventually be resolved. The > resolution, as I understand it, will be to re-cluster the individual name > authority entries. I do not know if the previous VIAF ID will be redirected > to the new cluster. But I am pretty sure that the matching actions take > place on the individual name authority records, not on the clusters. OK, I think we are looking at it from different directions. I was looking at data in VIAF, e.g. one of the two records for you (in RDF/XML): http://viaf.org/viaf/48369992/rdf.xml That file says the entity identified by <http://viaf.org/viaf/48369992> is a foaf:Person and a <http://rdvocab.info/uri/schema/FRBRentitiesRDA/Person>. In a comment, it says "formerly a viaf:NameAuthorityCluster"... That doesn't answer the question what happens if both VIAF identities are merged, though. It would be nice if the identifiers are said to be owl:sameAs the other. You are looking at the matching of OL entities to VIAF, which may, but not necessarily, has to be done using names. Am I correct? > The primary issue that I see, however, is that there is no preferred form of > the name for a cluster - the cluster keeps as preferred forms all of the > preferred forms from all of the clustered name authority records. So at the > point that you need to either compare a string to something in VIAF, or make > use of VIAF, you must operate on the records in the cluster - there is no > VIAF name data as such. As an ID, VIAF identifies a cluster of declarations > about a named entity, and those declarations can have significant > differences. > It looks like VIAF identifiers identify Persons and Organizations, with owl:sameAs to Deutsch Nationalbibliothek, British Library, and other who model Persons and Organizations, and skos:exactMatch to the Library of Congress Names Authority Files, who model concepts instead of persons and organizations apparently. >>> Ideally, the name headings from US MARC records would be matched with >>> the US name file, the name headings from (say) the National Library of >>> Spain would be matched with that name file (all in VIAF), etc. >> >> Do you mean that by matching name headings to authority records >> directly, we can circumvent VIAF but still get the identifiers used in >> various (national) libraries? That should be possible, I guess. > > In VIAF you will be matching name headings to the VIAF capture of the > authority records from the various libraries. Or we may use information from those individual libraries: the second VIAF ID for you, Karen, <http://viaf.org/viaf/195531823/rdf.xml> has a link to the DNB: <owl:sameAs rdf:resource="http://d-nb.info/gnd/181194619"/>. Whereas this particular example doesn't work because the DNB has no link back to VIAF, the RDF/XML from DNB for J.K. Rowling does: http://d-nb.info/gnd/122340469/about/rdf. So when we know the Gemeinsame Normdatei identifier for someone or something, we may look up the VIAF ID via that road. And since Wikipedia has links to VIAF and OL has links to Wikipedia, that may be another road. Ed Summers's Linkypedia tracks links from Wikipedia to VIAF: http://linkypedia.info/websites/23/pages/ (although the data is licensed CC-By-SA). > >>> Again, there are some folks who feel that the lack of expression is >>> problematic, although OL is not the only database to skip that entity. I >>> believe that the Edition is expression+edition, and that Work is pretty >>> close to FRBR work. >> >> >> Let those people create their own dataset that connects works and >> editions through Expressions that they control :D >> Pseudo-triples: >> <X Expression> <realizationOf> <OL Work>. >> <OL Edition> <embodimentOf> <X Expression>. >> >> Perhaps in the future Open Library allows for creating this within its >> own boundaries (/type/expression + links)? Or some fork of OL? >> (N.B. I haven't met those people - I haven't really met any of you :) >> - and don't intend to offend anyone.) > > > It's not a matter of connections -- there are data elements that are > designated as being Expression entity elements. This includes language, > format, and some collaborators (translator, illustrator, etc.). This entity > is meaningful (to those for whom it is). In OL, that information is in the > Edition record, which means that in OL it is currently not possible to act > on an Expression in the way that is intended in FRBR. I don't see this as a > big problem, and it could be corrected, but I do think it is important to > understand the intention of FRBR -- it is not an IT data structure but a > conceptual model, and the concepts of the model are both clear and important > to those who developed it. There is an Expression entity because it is > considered to be conceptually important in describing bibliographic > resources, and it is considered to be distinct from both the Work and the > Manifestation (Edition). I had not thought about it this way, thanks for explaining it. Ben > > kc > > >> >> I don't think anything needs to be changed in respect of RDF FRBR >> relations, by the way - I just remembered it being said. >>> >>> >>> kc >> >> >> Ben _______________________________________________ Ol-tech mailing list [email protected] http://mail.archive.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ol-tech To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send email to [email protected]
