Isbd namespaces

ISBD for the Semantic Web: namespaces, elements, vocabularies, application profile
Gordon Dunsire
Presented at the seminar Libraries and the Semantic Web: the role of International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD), National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, 25 Feb 2011

Semantic Web
“machine-readable metadata”
Faster! 24/7/365! Global!
Metadata expressed as “atomic” statements
A simple, single, irreducible statement
The title of this book is “Treasure island”
In a standard machine-processable format
Resource Description Framework (RDF)

Resource Description Framework
Metadata statement constructed in 3 parts
“Triple”
The title of this book is “Treasure island”
Subject of the statement = Subject: This book
Nature of the statement = Predicate: has title
Value of the statement = Object: “Treasure island”
This book – has title – “Treasure island”
subject – predicate - object

Identifiers
Need unambiguous way of identifying each part of the triple for efficient machine-processing
Human labels (“This book”, “has title”) no good
Same thing, different labels; different things, same label
Exploit the utility of the URL
Machine-readable, regular syntax, unambiguous
Uniform Resource Identifier (URI)

Uniform Resource Identifier
Can be any unique combination of numbers and letters
No intrinsic meaning; it’s just an identifying label
Can look like a URL
http://iflastandards.info/ns/isbd/elements/P1001
But does not lead to a Web page (in principle ...)
RDF requires the subject and predicate of triple to be URIs
Object can be a URI, or a literal string (“Treasure island”)

Namespaces
URI can be constructed from a base plus a unique, identifying suffix
http://iflastandards.info/ns/isbd/elements/
+ P1001
Base is known as a namespace
Can be abbreviated by human programmer
“isbd” = http://iflastandards.info/ns/isbd/elements/
isbd:P1001
Machine expands abbreviation for processing

Everything as triples in RDF
Every aspect of the metadata must be expressed in RDF to be machine-processable
Metadata about real-world objects (books, people, etc.)
Metadata about the predicates (definition, label, scope, etc.)
Common predicates apply to many types of thing (human-readable label, etc.)
High-level RDF namespaces (rdfs, owl)
RDF is expressed in RDF (“bootstrap”)

Creating namespaces and URIs
ISBD is using the Open Metadata Registry
Can assign a running “number” to the base to create a new URI
Set of properties for creating basic triples
Properties = predicates
rdfs:label for assigning a human-readable label to the subject
isbd:P1001 - rdfs:label - “has content form”

Subject
Predicate
Object
isbd:P1001
rdfs:label
“has content form”

Subject
Predicate
Object
isbdcf:T1008
skos:prefLabel
“spoken word”

Application profile
Need a way to specify how a useful “record” can be constructed from RDF triples
Which triples are involved, and from which namespaces?
Sequence? Repeatable? Mandatory?
Sub-component aggregations
Publication statement = place + name + date
Content rules?

Mandatory
Not repeatable
Aggregation of simpler elements
Syntax of aggregation (punctuation)

Isbd namespaces

by Scottish Library & Information Council (SLIC), CILIP in Scotland (CILIPS)

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Isbd namespaces Presentation Transcript