Re: Dynamic vs. Fixed World Views was Re: MARCXML to Topic Maps? MODS to Topic Maps?

Richard Light <richard-wLOraGfDqaUCqOQrDF6SL1pr/1R2p/[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.text.xml.xtm.general
Message-ID <[email protected]>
In message 
<AANLkTikmWHM8pRC1Im_WjeDIkQMucVVrU8UeW_97Hf61-JsoAwUIsXosN+BqQ9rBEUg@public.gmane.org>, Lars 
Heuer <[email protected]> writes
>Hi Richard,
>
>[...]
>> Surely Open Library is totally about "sharing their findings"?: it's a free
>> (unlike LibraryThing) wiki-supporting framework with API etc.
>
>Thanks for the link, I wasn't aware of it.
>
>If I understood it correctly, OpenLibrary does not use MARC or any
>other library format at all, right? The users have to resubmit all
>data and they ignore other standards (ignore == they do not convert
>MARC records to RDF for example)?

As I understand it, most of OL's material arrived in MARC format: "Much 
of the information contained herein was created by library 
professionals, often in the form of cataloging records in MARC 
format."[1]

They are currently working to express the information they have using 
FRBR[2], and at least some of this data is now available as RDF[3 - 
mine!].  (I would hesitate to call it Linked Data yet - where are the 
URLs? - but [1] indicates that this is clearly their intended direction 
of travel.)

Their attempts, in particular, to re-express LCSH as a faceted 
classification, suggest to me that there is scope for using a Topic Maps 
approach to move their project forward.

Richard

[1] http://openlibrary.org/about/lib
[2] 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_Requirements_for_Bibliographic_Re
cords
[3] http://openlibrary.org/works/OL2763056W.rdf
-- 
Richard Light
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