[open-bibliography] British Library data announcement

Mon Nov 22 12:49:46 UTC 2010

William,

I am not sure what you mean by "confusing in that it was a literal that
was constructed like a URI".

In the sample I see:

    <dcterms:identifier>GBA164362</dcterms:identifier>

and

    <dcterms:identifier>URN:ISBN:1850877019</dcterms:identifier>

Both are correct usage of dcterms:identifier (apart from the uppercase
as you pointed out). In both cases the identifier is the (literal)
string of characters. The second identifier is not just "constructed
like a URI", it is a URI! 

Yes, it may be confusing that you can use the URI in two ways: either as
the (literal) string itself like here in dcterms:identifier, or as a
pointer to a resource which you would do if you used it in
dcterms:relation, for example.

Both

    <dcterms:identifier>someURI</dcterms:identifier>

and

    <dcterms:relation rdf:resource="someURI" />

are correct -- the URI just plays different roles.

Makx.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: open-bibliography-bounces at lists.okfn.org [mailto:open-
> bibliography-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of William Waites
> Sent: Monday, November 22, 2010 1:20 PM
> To: List for Working Group on Open Bibliographic Data
> Subject: Re: [open-bibliography] British Library data announcement
> 
> * [2010-11-22 12:26:46 +0100] Makx Dekkers <mail at makxdekkers.com>
> écrit:
> 
> ] The range of that property is rdfs:Literal, on purpose.
> ]
> ] The reason is that an identifier is by definition a string of
> ] characters; it is not the resource it identifies. Of course,
> ] if the identifier is a URI, you can resolve that URI to get
> ] to the resource it identifies but it is not what the identifier
> ] "is".
> 
> Quite right. The BL data was confusing in that it was a literal
> that was constructed like a URI...
> 
> Cheers,
> -w
> --
> William Waites
> http://eris.okfn.org/ww/foaf#i
> 9C7E F636 52F6 1004 E40A  E565 98E3 BBF3 8320 7664
> 
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