introduction to application profiles
DESCRIPTION
Presented January 18, 2010 to the ALCTS Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access (CC:DA) as an introduction to RDF data, and application profiles. Presenters were Jon Phipps, Karen Coyle and Diane Hillmann.TRANSCRIPT
Jon Phipps: Overview
Karen Coyle: Step-by-Step
Diane Hillmann: Context
Application Profiles
What's an Application Profile?
It's a document
What's an Application Profile?
It's a document of an agreement
What's an Application Profile?
It's a document of an agreement on a model
What's an Application Profile?
It's a document of an agreement on a model of our stuff in the world
What's an Application Profile?
It's a document of an agreement on a model of how we describe our things in our world
What's an Application Profile?
It's a document of an agreement on a model of how we describe our things in our world
(domain) in the context of the global web of data
What's an Application Profile?
Things?
have a formal definition...
Things?
have a formal definition...Every individual in the OWL world is a
member of the class owl:Thing.
Things?
OWL?
Web Ontology Language
OWL?
Web Ontology LanguageA language that can be used to formalize a domain by defining classes, the relations
between them, and properties of those classes
OWL?
Web Ontology Languagecan define the semantics of an Application
Profile
OWL
Semantics?
What we mean when we define a class called 'book' and describe it with a property
called 'title’.
Semantics?
What we mean when we define a class called 'book' and describe it with a property
called 'title'.The 'Semantic Web' is a web of meaning
that uses the RDF model
Semantics?
Resource Description Framework
RDF?
Resource Description Framework
RDF?
Resource Description Framework“is a framework for representing information
in the Web”
RDF?
“has a simple data model that is easy for applications to process and manipulate.”
RDF?
“has a formal semantics which provides a dependable basis for reasoning about the
meaning of an RDF expression.”
RDF?
“URI references are used for naming all … things in RDF.”
RDF?
“is an open-world framework that allows anyone to make statements about any
resource.”
RDF?
“The underlying structure of any expression in RDF is a collection of triples”
RDF?
consist of a subject, a predicate and an object. A set of triples is called an RDF
graph
Triples?
consist of a resource, a property and a value surrogate.
Triples?
Not a value, but some thing that denotes the value
Value Surrogate?
can be a Literal or a non-Literal
Value Surrogate?
Can be a Plain Literal or a Typed Literal
Literal?
Is just a string with an optional (in this case totally unnecessary) language type
Plain Literal: “Samuel Clemens”@en-US
Plain Literal?
A string that must be interpretedTyped Literal:
“27” ^^xsd:integer
Typed Literal?
A string that must be interpretedTyped Literal:
“27” ^^xsd:integerdenotes the number 27
Typed Literal?
A URI that refers to a resource
Non-Literal?
http://RDVocab.info/termList/RDAContentType/1012
Identifies the skos:Concept labeled“sounds”@en-US
In the skos:ConceptScheme identified by the URI
http://RDVocab.info/termList/RDAContentType
Non-Literal?
A resource identifier.
URI?
A globally unique resource identifier.“All URIs share the property that different
persons or organizations can independently create them, and use them to identify
things.”
URI?
A URIthat identifies the property of the subjectof the triple
Predicate?
“Since RDF uses URIs instead of words to name things in statements, RDF refers to a set of URIs (particularly a set intended for a
specific purpose) as a vocabulary”
Predicate?
http://RDVocab.info/Elements/placeOfProduction
identifies the property labeled“Place of production”
in the vocabulary identified byhttp://RDVocab.info/Elements/
Property?
A vocabulary can declare a property to be a subproperty of another property.
Property?
A vocabulary can declare a property to be a subproperty of another property.
This creates a formal relationship between the properties
Property?
Please?
Can we talk about APs now?
• The Classes of resources your metadata is describing
• The Vocabularies that you will use as properties to describe them
An AP defines Semantics
OMGPlease, don’t start that again
Classes?
• Valid value ranges and datatypes for each property
• Valid lists of values (controlled vocabularies) for properties
• Cardinality of each property
An AP defines Syntax
Dublin Core defines this validation profile for each property as a“Statement Template”
An AP defines Syntax
A set of Statement Templates is a “Description Set”
An AP defines Syntax
An AP can describe multiple Description Sets.
An AP defines…
An AP can describe multiple Description Sets.
The full set of Description Sets is a “Description Set Profile”
An AP defines…
CC:DA Application Profile Intro 52
Application Profiles
Step-by-Step
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1. Domain model
Person
WEMI
Topic
FRBR1/18/2010
CC:DA Application Profile Intro 54
2. Determine elements
Work
TitleFormatetc
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3. Identify vocabularies
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Identify vocabularies
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Identify vocabularies
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58CC:DA Application Profile Intro
Do not select elements based on their names or labels
Do select elements based on their definitionsDo pay attention to what values can be usedDon't think that you can select an element
that doesn't quite match your need, and use it anyway
Do think: INTEROPERABILITY
Vocabulary do's & don'ts
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AP
Vocabulary
One vocabulary
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Vocabulary A Vocabulary BAP
More than one vocabulary
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Rolling your own
Vocabulary
AP
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Rolling your own
Vocabulary
AP
All elments must be defined outside of the AP.
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63CC:DA Application Profile Intro
Mandatory/optionalRepeatabilityValues (cannot conflict with defined element)
Free textControlled list of valuesFormatted text (e.g. dates)
"Constraints"
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What is the impact of all this on our world?
The Context for Application Profiles
65CC:DA Application Profile Intro
In the world we knew, interoperability was ensured by “compliance with standards”All of used the same ones in a closed worldData created by humans under strict
guidelinesIn an open world, interoperablity depends on:
Technologies that reach beyond one community
Data built in a variety of ways by people with different ideas of the world
Machines that act broadly based on human oversight
Understanding Interoperability
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66CC:DA Application Profile Intro
We’ve long accepted the limits of requiring upfront consensus to ensure interoperabilityIn a world of APs we can specialize beyond the
core of generally useful dataWe don’t need humans to ‘dumb down’
specialist data to enable sharing and interoperability
Machines can invoke relationships to generalize specialist data when necessary, without removing the value of extended specialized data for specialists
Why This Approach Instead?
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67CC:DA Application Profile Intro
We can’t afford to “go it alone”We can’t afford to ignore the world of data
outside librariesWe can’t afford to create all our data with
humansWe can’t afford NOT to rethink how we
operate
The Value of an Open World
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68CC:DA Application Profile Intro
It’s often free and easily availableIt’s ‘good enough’ (our stuff isn’t perfect
either)It takes us where we can’t go with our
current dataIt’s maintained by someone else We can choose to use data or not, APs allow
us to document that use, automate the process, and expose the data to others
What’s Out There? Data!
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69CC:DA Application Profile Intro
Records can be aggregated from statements when we need them
Statement-based data can be managed and improved more easily than record-based data
Statement-based data can carry provenance for each statement, allowing quality decisions to be made at a more granular level
Changing Our Data Management Ideas
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70CC:DA Application Profile Intro
Getting From Here to There
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The RDA VocabulariesThe principles of extension inherent in the
RDF Vocabulary standards usedOur experience in building and using data
Using What We Already Know
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72CC:DA Application Profile Intro
Proliferating our ideas and experience with bibliographic data to the broader Web world
Using newer technology to achieve more efficiency, transparency, and functionalityIf retrenchment is the only answer, the end
point is zeroSaving our precious human resources to
think, evaluate, ensure quality, and innovate
To Build Ourselves a New Future
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73CC:DA Application Profile Intro
We can map it in a variety of ways for a variety of uses
We can still use MARC as a [lossy] exchange format as long as we need itIt offers insufficient flexibility as the basis for a
new data world inter-connected to the WebWe can use our skills and our understanding
of bibliographic description to lead the way forward
What About Our Legacy Data?
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74CC:DA Application Profile Intro
Specialist communities are already thinking about what they need that RDA doesn’t provideUsing the extensibility of RDF vocabularies
allows them to choose from a number of options Moving proposals through the RDA processExtending the vocabularies through their
community domainChosing the extension option reflects the
reality that consensus has its limits, and specialist data may be better managed at a different level
Some Concrete Suggestions
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75CC:DA Application Profile Intro
With Application Profiles we can:Document our decisions clearlyMeasure compliance with our own intentionsExpress our decisions in a machine-actionable wayMake connections with other data communities by re-
using their data semanticsRDA expresses this ideal in its stated goals
What Do We Gain?
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76CC:DA Application Profile Intro
Less one-at-a-time creation and more data design, data improvement, data evaluation
Ability to look at our contrained resources and reduced budgets as the opportunity to reinvent ourselves
Rethinking Our Role
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77CC:DA Application Profile Intro
Guidelines for Dublin Core Application Profileshttp://dublincore.org/documents/profile-guideli
nes/
RDA Vocabularieshttp://metadataregistry.org/rdabrowse.htm
Thanks! Links! Questions?
1/18/2010