what is an rda record?
DESCRIPTION
Presentation at ALA session on new information about the RDARegistry.TRANSCRIPT
Infrastructure for Use
RDA Infrastructure Beyond the Guidelines
“What’s an RDA Record?”
Diane I. HillmannRDA UPDATE
RDA Update, Las Vegas 2
Descriptive Building Blocks
O Records built from statements (triples)O Triples contain subject – predicate - object
O Statements contain dataO Elements (classes, properties)O Relationships (relating ‘subject’ to ‘object’)O Values (descriptive terminology)
O Where does the data come from?O How is it maintained over time?O Where do I find it?
June 29, 2014
OFirst, a Review of Important Definitions:
O Class = A set of similar things
O Domain = Infers that the thing being described is a member of a particular class (‘The subject is a ________’)
O Range = The object is inferred to be a member of a specific class
O Constrained = Contains a domain and/or range
O Unconstrained = Not constrained by a domain or range
O CURIE = Syntax for Compact URIs (superset of XML prefixes)
How Does RDA Support
• Applications like RIMMF?• Users making choices about local
usage?• Mapping services (and the maps
themselves)?• Vendors trying to build systems using
RDA?
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Let’s take a tour
Looking beyond the next corner
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Around that corner …
O RDA Registry [http://www.RDAregistry.info]O Uses OMR, GitHub for easier (and more
automated) maintenance and documentation
O Contains a comprehensive set of URIs for many purposesO Canonical URI, lexical (multi-lingual) aliases
O Version and release controlO Outputs in many 'flavors' for the use of
many applications
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The New Map
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Documentation on Elements
O Basic
information on
elements:
O Suggested
prefix
O Example URIs
O Changelog
feedJune 29,
2014
RDA Update, Las Vegas 10
Available DownloadsO HTML build from
JSON--LD
O OMR UI used for updating
O Download choices updated with every change to element sets
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The Important Bits
“Cool URIs don’t change”
—Tim Berners-Lee
Flickr photo by Ludovic Hirlimann
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URI strategyO One URI was more than enough, or so
we used to think. We’ve set up multiples for RDA —Why?ODevelopers generally want something
they can read easily without a lookupOVocabulary creators want stability
and maintenance processes that don’t require a lot of URI changes
OMachines don’t care one way or the other
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Lexical AliasesO URIs based entirely on labels are not a good
long term strategy for a standard still developingO Terminology changes, and labels change
tooO Always redirected after changesO RDA is an international standard intended
to be available in multiple languagesO RDA tends to have lots of long element
names, not always ideal for labels
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Canonical URIsO Fixed, stable, always maintained (even
as a redirect)
O Based on numbers or letters and numbers
O Assigned automatically, so no typos
O Language independent (Multiple languages can be accommodated using the same canonical URI)
O Change of element itself only necessary if the definition changes significantly
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What’s Next?O Installing more background
processes to simplify and stabilize operations (and continue to limit requirements for human effort )
O Expanding and improving download options
O More languagesO Improved synchronization with the
ToolkitJune 29,
2014
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AND ...O Application Profiles (finally?)
O Reflecting the intentions and choices of the data providers
O Formatted to allow machine-to-machine interaction (as well as documentation for humans)
O Enabling [some] validation processes on usage, constraints and values
O Interoperability without prior agreement
June 29, 2014
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We Welcome Feedback!O On the RDA-L discussion listO Email to individuals (see the RDA
Registry home page for addresses)O Feedback button on every OMR pageO Issues page on the GitHub Project
page: https://github.com/RDARegistry/RDA-Vocabularies/issues
June 29, 2014