[openbiblio-dev] The Genero project

Wed Mar 30 11:07:49 UTC 2011

Hi,
I personally think it would be great to open up a discussion on establishing
a standard that best represents metadata in a database.
I understand that Bibliographica currently uses rdf / Dublin Core, together
with the BIBO ontology for works and the FOAF ontology for physical or legal
entities.. is that right ?
It could be interesting to check whether and how we can represent all the
information needed by the various projects that could benefit from such a
common standard.

Different projects might have some specific requirements which are currently
not necessarily taken into account by Bibliographica current data model,
e.g. for the public domain calculator, we need a lot of metadata such as:
the type of work, the birth/death date of the authors, its nationality, the
publisher, the date of creation, the degree of originality, the date of
creation, last modification, etc ...
whereas the genero project might also be interested in licensing terms and
in the format of the different instances of a work, etc...

Obviously this is a lot of information and we most likely do not have all of
this information at the moment, but creating a proper datatype that properly
organizes all the relevant information could be really helpful to find out
the kind of information we are (still) missing so as to focus our efforts in
obtaining the right kind of information.

Do you think it would be possible to set up a small task-force to work on
this kind of issues?

2011/3/29 Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org>

> Welcome Oystein!
>
> 2011/3/29 Øystein Jakobsen <oystein.jakobsen at fribit.no>:
> > Hi folks, let me introduce myself.
> >
> > I am Øystein Jakobsen, a free culture enthusiast from Norway. I am
> working
> > on the Genero project, the purpose of which is to create an ecosystem for
> > free culture. In short, a federated registry will hold the description
> and a
> > downloadable link to all works with a free license. Any service provider
> > (site) can then make available on their page any work in any form they
> > choose to, with minimum effort. It won't matter if you publish a picture
> > through Flickr, Europeana or Wikimedia Commons, it will be available
> through
> > all connected sites.
>
> This sounds great.
>
> > The project has the support of a number of free culture organisations,
> and
> > the board consists of characters such as David Levine, Robin Gross,
> Lawrence
> > Liang and more.
> >
> > As a part of this project, we need to define a metadata standard which
> can
> > describe any creative work. The standard needs to hold a number of
> > characteristics, including not limiting new modes of production (eg.
> > collaborative) or distribution (eg. torrents).
>
> We've already done quite a bit of work looking at (RDF) vocabs for
> describing cultural works. You also raise the interesting point that
> we should a) pay attention to recording attributes of licenses
> (something close to my heart) b) give information about 'format /
> modes of distribution'. Of course these are attributes that most
> relative to the 'concrete' instance of a work (what one would term
> "Item" in FRBR parlance I think).
>
> So far what we've been most focused on is recording the sort of
> catalogue information one would find in a library (which is more about
> the general info about the book / recording / film ...).
>
> > A slideset describing the project is here:
> > http://www.slideshare.net/FriBit/genero-presentation-at-ifla
> > A detailed description is found here: www.inweave.org
> >
> > I was recommended to connect this initiative to the OKFN OpenBiblio
> > initiative by Primavera de Filippi. I hope to join the two initiatives
> and
> > to rely on your knowledge on metadata standards, as mine is limited.
>
> It would be great to work with you here to hammer out a proposal.
>
> Rufus
>
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