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Ontology
This document describes the Deichman ontology.
The namespace for this ontology is http://data.deichman.no/ontology#.
The preferred prefix for this ontology is deichman
Owen's comment about why linked data at all
This is a lightweight bibliographic ontology for use in library systems; the ontology is a specification for the application in use at Deichmanske bibliotek, Oslo public library. Don't let the fact that this ontology is a specification for an application — that just means that it is tried and tested and demonstrably works.
The ontology was developed as the core data model for bibliographic data in LS.ext, the library system developed by Oslo public library.
With many years of RDF and data modelling experience, heavy theorectical approaches and generic metadata approaches were eschewed in favour of a lightweight, tightly specified ontology.
Lightweight should not be confused with theoretically lightweight; the framework is not only robust and production ready, it is in production as the core data model in a functioning system. This contrasts heavily with other approaches that specify looser vocabulary and more complex relations.
The ontology itself is informed by understandings of ontologies such as BIBFRAME, BIBO, British library data model, CIDOC-CRM, DC Terms, FOAF, Schema.org, SKOS and is defined in RDFS.
Aligning the ontology with other ontologies is a simple task and the cost in terms of technical overhead and on-the-fly mapping speed is very low; this strategy is recommended for others who develop similar systems. Providing data with these mappings can be facilitated by using Sven Larsson's AP content negotiation.
The ontology is designed to provide an entity orientated view of bibliographic data. Several basic concepts are provided. A general work class provides support for basic bibliographic entities; the basic assumption is that everything is a work until proven otherwise.
A specific publication of a work is a Publication entity; what constitutes a publication is that which is not common to all works; typically, this is information like carrier, publication date and publisher.
Work can be expressed as Issues of a Series and similarly, Publications may have parts.
Entities for agents, as Corporations and Persons, involved in the creation and manipulation of content provide ways of expressing who did what.
A set of classes to express other aspects of Works and Publications, such as Subjects (whether they are Concepts, Corporations, Events, Persons, Places or Works), Genres, Instrumentations (in the case of music) and Composition types.
A number of helper classes are provided that express qualities of relationships: WorkRelation, RelationshipType as well as specific properties of certain kinds of entities: MainEntry, ClassificationEntry, ClassificationSource.
The ontology defines numerous ways of expressing relationships between these entities and relationships with literals that express the string data associated with these entities.