Presented January 18, 2010 to the ALCTS Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access (CC:DA) as an introduction to RDF data, and application profiles. Presenters were Jon Phipps, Karen Coyle and Diane Hillmann.

1. Jon Phipps: Overview Karen Coyle: Step-by-Step Diane Hillmann: Context Application Profiles

2. What's an Application Profile?

3. What's an Application Profile? It's a document

4. What's an Application Profile? It's a document of an agreement

5. What's an Application Profile? It's a document of an agreement on a model

6. What's an Application Profile? It's a document of an agreement on a model of our stuff in the world

7. What's an Application Profile? It's a document of an agreement on a model of how we describe our things in our world

8. What's an Application Profile? It's a document of an agreement on a model of how we describe ourthings in our world (domain) in the context of the global web of data

9. Things?

10. Things? have a formal definition...

11. Things? have a formal definition... Every individual in the OWLworld is a member of the classowl:Thing.

12. OWL?

13. OWL? Web Ontology Language

14. OWL? Web Ontology Language A language that can be used to formalize a domain by defining classes, the relations between them, and properties of those classes

15. OWL Web Ontology Language can define the semantics of an Application Profile

16. Semantics?

17. Semantics? What we mean when we define a class called 'book' and describe it with a property called 'title’.

18. Semantics? What we mean when we define a class called 'book' and describe it with a property called 'title'. The 'Semantic Web' is a web of meaning that uses the RDF model

19. RDF? Resource Description Framework

20. RDF? Resource Description Framework

21. RDF? Resource Description Framework “is a framework for representing information in the Web”

22. RDF? “has a simple data model that is easy for applications to process and manipulate.”

23. RDF? “has a formal semantics which provides a dependable basis for reasoning about the meaning of an RDF expression.”

24. RDF? “URI references are used for naming all … things in RDF.”

25. RDF? “is an open-world framework that allows anyone to make statements about any resource.”

26. RDF? “The underlying structure of any expression in RDF is a collection of triples”

27. Triples? consist of a subject, a predicate and an object. A set of triples is called an RDF graph

28. Triples? consist of a resource, a property and a value surrogate.

29. Value Surrogate? Not a value, but some thing that denotes the value

30. Value Surrogate? can be a Literal or a non-Literal

31. Literal? Can be a Plain Literal or a Typed Literal

32. Plain Literal? Is just a string with an optional (in this case totally unnecessary) language type Plain Literal: “Samuel Clemens”@en-US

33. Typed Literal? A string that must be interpreted Typed Literal: “27” ^^xsd:integer

34. Typed Literal? A string that must be interpreted Typed Literal: “27” ^^xsd:integer denotes the number 27

35. Non-Literal? A URI that refers to a resource

36. Non-Literal? http://RDVocab.info/termList/RDAContentType/1012 Identifies the skos:Concept labeled “sounds”@en-US In the skos:ConceptScheme identified by the URI http://RDVocab.info/termList/RDAContentType

37. URI? A resource identifier.

38. URI? A globally unique resource identifier. “All URIs share the property that different persons or organizations can independently create them, and use them to identify things.”

39. Predicate? A URI that identifies the property of the subjectof the triple

40. Predicate? “Since RDF uses URIs instead of words to name things in statements, RDF refers to a set of URIs (particularly a set intended for a specific purpose) as a vocabulary”

41. Property? http://RDVocab.info/Elements/placeOfProductionidentifies the property labeled “Place of production” in the vocabulary identified byhttp://RDVocab.info/Elements/

42. Property? A vocabulary can declare a property to be a subproperty of another property.

43. Property? A vocabulary can declare a property to be a subproperty of another property.This creates a formal relationship between the properties

44. Can we talk about APs now? Please?

48. Valid lists of values (controlled vocabularies) for properties

50. An AP defines Syntax A set of Statement Templates is a “Description Set”

51. An AP defines… An AP can describe multiple Description Sets.

52. An AP defines… An AP can describe multiple Description Sets. The full set of Description Sets is a “Description Set Profile”

53. Application Profiles Step-by-Step 1/18/2010 52 CC:DA Application Profile Intro

54. 1. Domain model Person WEMI Topic FRBR 1/18/2010 53 CC:DA Application Profile Intro

55. 2. Determine elements Work Title Format etc 1/18/2010 54 CC:DA Application Profile Intro

56. 3. Identify vocabularies 1/18/2010 55 CC:DA Application Profile Intro

57. Identify vocabularies 1/18/2010 56 CC:DA Application Profile Intro

58. Identify vocabularies 1/18/2010 57 CC:DA Application Profile Intro

59. Vocabulary do's & don'ts Do not select elements based on their names or labels Do select elements based on their definitions Do pay attention to what values can be used Don't think that you can select an element that doesn't quite match your need, and use it anyway Do think: INTEROPERABILITY 1/18/2010 58 CC:DA Application Profile Intro

60. One vocabulary Vocabulary AP 1/18/2010 59 CC:DA Application Profile Intro

61. More than one vocabulary Vocabulary A Vocabulary B AP 1/18/2010 60 CC:DA Application Profile Intro

62. Rolling your own Vocabulary AP 1/18/2010 61 CC:DA Application Profile Intro

63. Rolling your own Vocabulary All elments must be defined outside of the AP. AP 1/18/2010 62 CC:DA Application Profile Intro

64. "Constraints" Mandatory/optional Repeatability Values (cannot conflict with defined element)‏ Free text Controlled list of values Formatted text (e.g. dates)‏ 1/18/2010 63 CC:DA Application Profile Intro

65. What is the impact of all this on our world? The Context for Application Profiles

66. In the world we knew, interoperability was ensured by “compliance with standards” All of used the same ones in a closed world Data created by humans under strict guidelines In an open world, interoperablity depends on: Technologies that reach beyond one community Data built in a variety of ways by people with different ideas of the world Machines that act broadly based on human oversight Understanding Interoperability 1/18/2010 65 CC:DA Application Profile Intro

67. We’ve long accepted the limits of requiring upfront consensus to ensure interoperability In a world of APs we can specialize beyond the core of generally useful data We don’t need humans to ‘dumb down’ specialist data to enable sharing and interoperability Machines can invoke relationships to generalize specialist data when necessary, without removing the value of extended specialized data for specialists Why This Approach Instead? 1/18/2010 66 CC:DA Application Profile Intro

68. We can’t afford to “go it alone” We can’t afford to ignore the world of data outside libraries We can’t afford to create all our data with humans We can’t afford NOT to rethink how we operate The Value of an Open World 1/18/2010 67 CC:DA Application Profile Intro

69. It’s often free and easily available It’s ‘good enough’ (our stuff isn’t perfect either) It takes us where we can’t go with our current data It’s maintained by someone else We can choose to use data or not, APs allow us to document that use, automate the process, and expose the data to others What’s Out There? Data! 1/18/2010 68 CC:DA Application Profile Intro

70. Records can be aggregated from statements when we need them Statement-based data can be managed and improved more easily than record-based data Statement-based data can carry provenance for each statement, allowing quality decisions to be made at a more granular level Changing Our Data Management Ideas 1/18/2010 69 CC:DA Application Profile Intro

71. Getting From Here to There 1/18/2010 70 CC:DA Application Profile Intro

72. The RDA Vocabularies The principles of extension inherent in the RDF Vocabulary standards used Our experience in building and using data Using What We Already Know 1/18/2010 71 CC:DA Application Profile Intro

73. Proliferating our ideas and experience with bibliographic data to the broader Web world Using newer technology to achieve more efficiency, transparency, and functionality If retrenchment is the only answer, the end point is zero Saving our precious human resources to think, evaluate, ensure quality, and innovate To Build Ourselves a New Future 1/18/2010 72 CC:DA Application Profile Intro

74. We can map it in a variety of ways for a variety of uses We can still use MARC as a [lossy] exchange format as long as we need it It offers insufficient flexibility as the basis for a new data world inter-connected to the Web We can use our skills and our understanding of bibliographic description to lead the way forward What About Our Legacy Data? 1/18/2010 73 CC:DA Application Profile Intro

75. Specialist communities are already thinking about what they need that RDA doesn’t provide Using the extensibility of RDF vocabularies allows them to choose from a number of options Moving proposals through the RDA process Extending the vocabularies through their community domain Chosing the extension option reflects the reality that consensus has its limits, and specialist data may be better managed at a different level Some Concrete Suggestions 1/18/2010 74 CC:DA Application Profile Intro

76. With Application Profiles we can: Document our decisions clearly Measure compliance with our own intentions Express our decisions in a machine-actionable way Make connections with other data communities by re-using their data semantics RDA expresses this ideal in its stated goals What Do We Gain? 1/18/2010 75 CC:DA Application Profile Intro

77. Less one-at-a-time creation and more data design, data improvement, data evaluation Ability to look at our contrained resources and reduced budgets as the opportunity to reinvent ourselves Rethinking Our Role 1/18/2010 76 CC:DA Application Profile Intro

78. Guidelines for Dublin Core Application Profiles http://dublincore.org/documents/profile-guidelines/ RDA Vocabularies http://metadataregistry.org/rdabrowse.htm Thanks! Links! Questions? 1/18/2010 77 CC:DA Application Profile Intro