IFLA Namespaces Gordon Dunsire Chair IFLA Namespaces Technical

IFLA Namespaces Gordon Dunsire Chair, IFLA Namespaces Technical Group Session 204 — IFLA library standards and the IFLA Committee on Standards – how can they better serve you? — IFLA Committee on Standards IFLA World Library and Information Congress 1117 August 2012, Helsinki, Finland

Overview v. Background v. Namespaces, linked data, Semantic Web v. Task Group report on namespace requirements v. Current activity v. Strategic issues

Semantic Web (1) v. Metadata represented as simple, single statements v“This book has title ‘Metadata is easy’” v. Statements are in 3 parts v. This book – has title – ‘Metadata is easy’ v. A triple! v. Subject – predicate - object

Semantic Web (2) v. Use machines to process metadata v. Very fast, global network, 24/7 v. Use the infrastructure of the World-Wide Web v. Machines require things to be identified v. No ambiguity – machines are dumb v. Identifiers based on Uniform Resource Locator (URL) v. Uniform Resource Identifier (URI)

Semantic Web (3) v. URI can be constructed using “URL domain” plus local identifier v. Domain is guaranteed to be unique v. Set of URIs with same domain is a “namespace” v. IFLA domain: http: //iflastandards. info v. URI for FRBR entity “Work”: vhttp: //iflastandards. info/ns/fr/frbrer/C 1001

IFLA namespaces v. Functional Requirements models v. FRBR, FRAD, FRSAD v. International Standard Bibliographic Description v. ISBD Consolidated v. Multilingual Dictionary of Cataloguing v. Mul. Di. Cat v. UNIMARC (in the future)

IFLA Namespaces Task Group v. Set up in 2009, under auspices of Classification & Indexing Section v. Representation from Bibliography, Cataloguing, C&I, Information Technology, and Knowledge Management sections v+ FRBR Review Group, ISBD/XML Study Group

Tasks v. To prepare a requirements and options paper on the topic of IFLA support for the representation of IFLA standards in formats suitable for use in the Semantic Web. v. To act as caretaker until an IFLA Namespaces Technical Group is constituted. v. Requirements paper published in 2010

Some requirements v. Version control v. History audit v. Multilingual v. De-referencing v. Human-readable data for humans v. Machine-readable data for machines

http: //iflastandards. info/ns/isbd/

http: //iflastandards. info/ns/isbd/terms/contentform/T 1003

http: //iflastandards. info/ns/isbd/terms/contentform/T 1003. rdf

Current activity (1) v. Monitor development of IFLA namespaces v. FRBRer, FRBRoo, FRAD, FRSAD, ISBD, Mul. Di. Cat v. Develop mappings/links between namespaces v. Develop links to non-IFLA namespaces v. Dublin Core, MARC 21, RDA v. Investigate “commons” namespaces for interoperability v. Between domains (archives, libraries, museums, etc. ) and their schema and data

Standards alignment => namespace mapping Mul. Di. Cat ISBD UNIMARC FRBR FRAD FRSAD MARC 21 RDA EAD VRA …

Current activity (2) v. Develop guidelines on translations of namespaces v. Multilingual Semantic Web v. Publish guidelines by end of 2012 v. Develop guidelines on use of IFLA namespaces v. Extension and refinement for special requirements v. Task for 2013

Strategic issues 1: Beyond bibliographic namespaces v. E. g. education and training v. RDF properties for “has curriculum”, “has accredited agent”, “has audience”, etc. v. E. g. conservation of, and access to, special formats v. Value vocabularies that can link to RDA/ONIX Framework, etc.

Strategic issues 2: What it means to be “semantic” and “linked” v. Ur-standards need clear terminology and definitions v. Ur-standards should explicitly identify entities, attributes, and relationships, for representation as RDF classes and properties (element sets) v. IFLA namespaces should be ontologically mapped, and synchronized with changes in urstandards

Strategic issues 3: What it means to be “open” and “linked” v. Ur-standards should be freely available v. Underpin trust in derived namespaces v. Control and constraint discourage innovative application of IFLA schemas and members’ datasets v. But control is necessary for standardization v. IFLA standards in the global digital environment need to move further into the open ecology v. E. g. “Commons” namespaces, semi-official web services, etc.

Thank you! vgordon@gordondunsire. com