RDF Expression of Martha Yee's Cataloging Rules 

NOTE: I'm adding this page as a way to discuss the RDF/OWL vocabulary created by Martha Yee for her cataloging rules. Please log in and comment.

Comments are also happening on Martha's Blog

Renette Davis has done Examples using Martha's schema.

The vocabulary has classes and properties. There are 23 classes. These are Karen's comments on the classes and their definitions.

List of classes: Conference or Other event as corporate body, creator, Corporate Body, Corporate Subdivision, Discipline, Event as subject, Expression, Genre/Form, Item, Jurisdictional, corporate subdivision, Manifestation, Person, Place as Geographical area, Place as Jurisdictional Corporate Body, Subject, Subject subdivision, Subject chronological subdivision, Subject form subdivision, Subject geographical subdivision, Subject topical subdivision, Title-Manifestation, Work

Comments on Subject

I continue to think that Subject is a relationship, not an entity in itself (and therefore not a class). Instead, the elements of Yee classes such as "Subject chronological subdivision" could be broken down into more universal, and therefore more usable, elements. Here's what I suggest:

From this you could create:

(book) hasTopic (time)

(book) hasTopic (concept)

Those would be the "atoms" for expressing subjects. To create a subject heading with ordered facets is something that would be done not in the definition of classes and properties but in a schema that is part of the application profile. The profile will need to define a subject heading element that could consist of the classes above. The subject heading would have the "isTopicOf" relationship with the bibliographic item being described. Using the classes above, however, some other application profile could use the classes directly in the subject relationship, ending up with something similar to the FAST headings used by OCLC.

Comments on Event

 In Yee's work, Event is limited to "Event as subject". It would be preferable to define Event as a class, and allow it to function as a subject using the tecnique above. There may be other needs for Event (performance? Conference?) in which it is not a subject. I can also imagine conference and performance as sub-classes of event (a conference "is a type of" event, a performance "is a type of" event). This would fit the DC "dumb down" rule, meaning that a system that wishes to use the sub-classes can do so, but a simpler system that only defines "event" as a class could dumb down performance and conference to "Event" and it would still be true.

Can we find another way to express "Conference or event as corporate body?"  Does the "creatorOf" property suffice?

 Create your own educational wiki!HelpPublic, not yet premium Privacy Policy RSS