* On Nov 20, 2008, at 07:27 AM, Richard Light wrote:
However, my biggest query is about people - in a museum/historical
context,
you're talking about all the people who ever lived, whether famous
or not.
I could invent URIs for each person mentioned in the Wordsworth
Trust data,
and publish those, but then they would be locked into a single silo
with no
prospect of interoperability with any other museum's personal data.
Mapping
names across thousands of museum triple stores is not a scalable
option.
So ... is there a case for "deadpeople.org", a site which does for
historical
people what Geonames does for place names? ("dead" = "no data
protection
issues": I'm not just being macabre.) The site should expect a
constant
flood of new people (and should issue a unique URI for each as it
creates
the central record), but should also allow queries against existing
entries,
so that the matching process can happen on a case-by-case basis in a
central
place, rather than being done after the event.
There are many who question their motives and the actions they take
based on
the data they collect, but ...
The LDS (Mormons, Church of Jesus Chris of Latter Day Saints, pick-a-
name) has
the motivation, the budget, the network and equipment infrastructure,
etc., to
collect and maintain this, as part of their large project of being
*the* place
for genealogical research and information.
If nothing else, I would think they could be enlisted to help create
the right
ontology, and the large central registry.
Be seeing you,
Ted
