[openbiblio-dev] Data at bibliographica--two small issues

Sun Nov 28 16:26:47 UTC 2010

Hi William,

> * [2010-11-25 13:54:52 +0100] Antoine Isaac<aisaac at few.vu.nl>  écrit:
> ]
> ] - a foaf:isPrimaryTopicCo property is being used. I guess it should be
> ] foaf:isPrimaryTopicOf.
>
> Yes, this is a known issue mentioned in the errata [0] and will be
> fixed soon. Hopefully anything using these statements will infer the
> proper one from the foaf:primaryTopic inverse which is also there.

OK!

> ] - I find the use of skos:notation a bit weird in triples like
> ] _:b1982145<http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#notation>  "Lindsay, Jack,
> ] 1900-1990." .
> ] This looks like a real name (and has been appropriately represented as
> ] foaf:name). If you want to use SKOS (which is always a good idea :-) )
> ] skos:prefLabel would probably be better.
>
> My reasoning for this was that these strings are in some way the
> canonical ones that appear in the authority database of the BL so are
> more key-like than labels. Does this make sense?
>  
> It wouldn't be impossible to also have these as skos:prefLabel but I
> guess we should pay some attention to the number of triples as the
> dataset is already very big...

Well, I think the solution would be then to represent that information using skos:prefLabel only :-)
These labels are canonical strings, as you say. But this dimension is somehow included in the intended usage of skos:prefLabel:
[
Following common practice in KOS design, the preferred label of a concept may also be used to unambiguously represent this concept within a KOS and its applications.
] [1]

Further, notations are really meant *not* to be used with "normal" labels:
[
A notation is different from a lexical label in that a notation is not normally recognizable as a word or sequence of words in any natural language.
]  [2]

In fact, your current data is *not* inconsistent with any formal axiom in SKOS. But it does not follow the practice that one would expect...

Cheers,

Antoine

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/skos-primer#secpref
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/skos-reference#notations