darcusblog

Yet another bibliographic representation posted by a commenter on this update on BibTeX in RDF.

This one is also defined in RDF but draws on Dublin Core and … vCard! Interesting. Here an unlikely standard is used to further parse the DC creator data, in ways that might solve some problems related to name data.

An example:

     dc:creator>
        <rdf:Seq>
          <rdf:li rdf:parseType="Resource">
            <bqs:Person rdf:parseType="Resource">
              <vCard:N rdf:parseType="Resource">
                <vCard:Family>Yang</vCard:Family>
                <vCard:Given>T</vCard:Given>
              </vCard:N>  
              <vCard:EMAIL rdf:parseType="Resource">
                <rdf:value>phoney@nowhere.com</rdf:value>
                <rdf:type rdf:resource="http://imc.org/vCard/3.0#internet" />
              </vCard:EMAIL>
            </bqs:Person>
          </rdf:li>
          <rdf:li rdf:parseType="Resource">
            <bqs:Person rdf:parseType="Resource">
              <vCard:N rdf:parseType="Resource">
                <vCard:Family>Snyders</vCard:Family>
                <vCard:Given>D</vCard:Given>
                <vCard:Other>J</vCard:Other>
              </vCard:N>
              <vCard:ORG rdf:parseType="Resource">
                <vCard:Orgname>
                  Vanderbilt University School of Medicine
                </vCard:Orgname>
                <vCard:Orgunit>Department of Pharmacology</vCard:Orgunit>
              </vCard:ORG>
            </bqs:Person>
          </rdf:li>
          <rdf:li rdf:parseType="Resource">
            <bqs:Person rdf:parseType="Resource">
              <vCard:N rdf:parseType="Resource">
                <vCard:Family>Roden</vCard:Family>
                <vCard:Given>D</vCard:Given>
                <vCard:Other>M</vCard:Other>
              </vCard:N>
              <vCard:ADR rdf:parseType="Resource">
                <vCard:Extadd>
                  Dept. of Pharmacology, 
                  Vanderbilt University School of Medicine
                </vCard:Extadd>
                <vCard:Locality>Nashville</vCard:Locality>
                <vCard:Region>TN</vCard:Region>
                <vCard:Pcode>37232-6602</vCard:Pcode>
                <vCard:Country>USA</vCard:Country>
              </vCard:ADR>
            </bqs:Person>
          </rdf:li>
        </rdf:Seq>
      </dc:creator>

There has been a vigorous debate on the RefDB-user list about how to properly parse names. MODS distinguishes between family and given names. Nevertheless, this presents problems for dealing with middle/secondary names, aka “those names that often get abbreviated even in citation styles that demand the full first/given name.” In the above, that awkward secondary given name is coded as “other.” Perhaps not ideal, but maybe better?

I still wonder if there is not a better RDF representation of names still that could be plugged in.

As for the rest of the schema, I like that it is based on DC, rather than BibTeX. I don’t like it’s typing, though. Consider this:

“Article” (subclassed into “JournalArticle”, for journal articles, and “BookArticle”, for book chapters).

This is where people designing these schemas can learn from the library community, and particularly from MODS. It makes more sense to me to distinguish between parts and wholes, and then within that a) distinguish between wholes that are monographic (books), and those that are serial (periodicals) and b) to separate out genre issues.

A “journal article” is thus simply a resource that has a title, authors, etc., but is also a part of something else: a serial. Etc,..

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 7th, 2004 at 4:24 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.