Bob,
If you have a complex dataset in an area with well-established
metadata conventions (e.g. bibliographic information datasets), then
it's usually easy to re-use existing vocabularies.
Outside of these areas, if there are no widely accepted standards,
then it's quite often necessary to roll your own. That's often easier
than cobbling together a solution from ill-fitting bits and pieces.
You can add mappings to other vocabularies later, based on community
feedback.
That being said:
For addresses there's an RDF version of vCard:
http://norman.walsh.name/2005/12/05/vcard
For people, obviously there's FOAF:
http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1
All the best,
Richard
On 27 Jun 2008, at 00:19, Bob Wyman wrote:
I would like to make available as Linked Data several databases
describing several million non-profits, NGO's and foundations. The
data includes things like name of organization, address, budget,
source of funds, major programs, key personnel, relationships to
other organizations, area of expertise, etc.
What I don't have is an RDF vocabulary with which to describe these
things. While I could define one myself, I would like to base my
work on existing standards," or common practice, however, seemingly
endless digging through the web indicates that there aren't any
obvious "standards" for describing even basic things like address in
RDF. Perhaps, I'm looking in the wrong places...
Ideally, I would find some well formed vocabulary for a "Business
Description" that I could use or adapt. I would appreciate it if
anyone could give me pointers to either such a well worked
vocabulary or at least to smaller vocabularies for things like
address that I could use in composing a vocabulary with which to
publish this data. Can you help?
bob wyman
