ISBD for the Semantic Web: namespaces, elements, vocabularies, application profile

Gordon DunsirePresented at the seminar Libraries and the Semantic Web: the role of International Standard Bibliographic

Description (ISBD), National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, 25 Feb 2011

Semantic Web

“machine-readable metadata”Faster! 24/7/365! Global!

Metadata expressed as “atomic” statementsA simple, single, irreducible statement

The title of this book is “Treasure island”

In a standard machine-processable formatResource Description Framework (RDF)

Resource Description Framework

Metadata statement constructed in 3 parts“Triple”

The title of this book is “Treasure island”Subject of the statement = Subject: This bookNature of the statement = Predicate: has titleValue of the statement = Object: “Treasure island”

This book – has title – “Treasure island”subject – predicate - object

Identifiers

Need unambiguous way of identifying each part of the triple for efficient machine-processingHuman labels (“This book”, “has title”) no good

Same thing, different labels; different things, same label

Exploit the utility of the URLMachine-readable, regular syntax, unambiguous

Uniform Resource Identifier (URI)

Uniform Resource Identifier

Can be any unique combination of numbers and lettersNo intrinsic meaning; it’s just an identifying label

Can look like a URLhttp://iflastandards.info/ns/isbd/elements/P1001But does not lead to a Web page (in principle ...)

RDF requires the subject and predicate of triple to be URIsObject can be a URI, or a literal string (“Treasure

island”)

Namespaces

URI can be constructed from a base plus a unique, identifying suffixhttp://iflastandards.info/ns/isbd/elements/+ P1001

Base is known as a namespaceCan be abbreviated by human programmer

“isbd” = http://iflastandards.info/ns/isbd/elements/isbd:P1001

Machine expands abbreviation for processing

Everything as triples in RDF

Every aspect of the metadata must be expressed in RDF to be machine-processableMetadata about real-world objects (books,

people, etc.)Metadata about the predicates (definition, label,

scope, etc.)Common predicates apply to many types of thing

(human-readable label, etc.)High-level RDF namespaces (rdfs, owl)

RDF is expressed in RDF (“bootstrap”)

Creating namespaces and URIs

ISBD is using the Open Metadata RegistryCan assign a running “number” to the base to

create a new URISet of properties for creating basic triples

Properties = predicatesrdfs:label for assigning a human-readable label to

the subjectisbd:P1001 - rdfs:label - “has content form”

Subject Predicate Object

isbd:P1001 rdfs:label “has content form”

Subject Predicate Object

isbdcf:T1008 skos:prefLabel “spoken word”

Application profile

Need a way to specify how a useful “record” can be constructed from RDF triples

Which triples are involved, and from which namespaces?

Sequence? Repeatable? Mandatory?Sub-component aggregations

Publication statement = place + name + dateContent rules?

Mandatory Not repeatable Aggregation of simpler elements

Syntax of aggregation (punctuation)