The provenance of statements is a recognised issue in the Semantic Web.. See for example the following interview with Sir Tim Berners-Lee: http://talis-podcasts.s3.amazonaws.com/twt20080207_TimBL.html Kingsley Idehen's comments about provenance in the following panel discussion on linked open data are particularly interesting. In a nutshell, he says that truth is subjective, all we can do is understand the source of the opinion: http://vimeo.com/5492097 By way of introduction, I am a PhD student at Victoria Unversity of Wellington, New Zealand. My background is in archives and my research is concerned with the material/technological foundations for different ways of thinking about "information" - and how patterns of thought re-establish themselves in metadata. The interface between library and archive ways of thinking is of particular interest, which is why I have been following the RDA listserv. If the Semantic Web is to be truly a web of meaning (at least for librarians and archivists), we need to think carefully about the meanings we build into it. Do our old ways of thinking and practising have the necessary rigor? The fact that these issues are being discussed on this listserv is very encouraging. I would be interested in hearing from anybody who shares my interests. Regards to all, Kay email: [email protected] more about my research at: http://www.sim.vuw.ac.nz/research/students/index..aspx#KaySanderson --- On Mon, 8/3/10, Dan Matei <[email protected]> wrote:
From: Dan Matei <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [RDA-L] Question about RDA relationships (App. J) To: [email protected] Date: Monday, 8 March, 2010, 9:15 AM -----Original Message----- From: John Attig <[email protected]> Date: Sun, 7 Mar 2010 14:28:18 -0500 > > One of the things that makes me nervous about the semantic web world > of individual statements is that the truth value of these statements > is not assured. That is an unavoidable problem with statements on > the web, and I'm not sure there is a solution to it. However, I > would suggest that the context in which these statements are embedded > is one of the factors that enables one to assign a truth value to them. Right ! My own big problem with the RDF triples is that they are "atoms" out of context: (subject -- predicate -- object). I would prefer something like: (URI(Moby Dick) -- URI(hasAuthor/isAuthorOf) -- URI(Melville)) -- (who said so) -- (when) -- (based on what) Moreover: 1) at URI(Moby Dick) there is a "metadata record" for "Moby Dick" (the work); 2) at URI(hasAuthor/isAuthorOf) there is a "definition" of the predicate "hasAuthor/isAuthorOf"; 3) at URI(Melville) there is a "record" for Herman Melville. That is, a more "molecular" landscape. Moreover, sometimes even the predicate has some properties within the context of a particular "assertion", i.e. needs some metadata, i.e. has a "metadata record" of its own. E.g. URI(person x) -- (wasAffiliated: from ..., to ..., position ...) -- URI(institution y).... Dan Matei ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Dan Matei, director Institutul de Memorie Culturală - CIMEC Piata Presei Libere nr. 1, CP 33-90 013701 București [Bucharest], Romania, www.cimec.ro tel. (+4)021 317 90 72; fax (+4)021 317 90 64 www.cimec.ro
