We have created class hierarchies for our various objects: an
APNI name is a BOA name is a TDWG name. As you have noticed, our
individual name objects are explicitly declared both as TDWG names and
also APNI names. Although the TDWG type is implied, I include it
explicitly so that people can ignore our vocabulary if they wish when
looking at our data. We have created "de novo" properties and named
individuals for things in our data for which we could not find a
suitable equivalent in the TDWG vocabulary, and these are available
too, eg:
http://www.biodiversity.org.au/voc/apni/NomenclaturalQualifierTerm
.
Of course, "deliberately" does not necessarily mean "a good
idea" or "done correctly", but you have to start somewhere.
Yes, you have to start somewhere. That was the reason why I created
the sernec: namespace (
The nice thing about the semantic web is that you can in fact do
this. All of our extra bits are identified with URIs, and the URIs all
start with "
http://biodiversity.org.au".
At present, these extra bits mean nothing outside of the data here at
BOA. A human could make sense of many of them, but many of the types,
properties, and named individuals do not even contain titles and
descriptions: as I am not a taxonomist myself, I have only the vaguest
idea what the difference might be between "nom illeg" and "nom rej".
Better to leave it blank.
Of course, this is not a problem for the TDWG vocabularies, but
that's because I am working the other way around: I was not trying to
create a vocabulary that the general community could use, but to
document an existing (albeit implied) one. Our properties declare
explicit domains. For well-discussed reasons, the TDWG vocabularies do
not. But I don't think that those reasons (unintentional type
declarations made by people using your terms) apply. Indeed - the
reverse is almost the whole point. I don't think we *want* other people
using
biodiversity.org.au
terms: their meanings potentially are idiosyncratic to the systems here
(perhaps subtly) because they don't have proper descriptions -
descriptions I am not able to supply.
Once there are standards we can back-fit our data, just as
everyone else will back-fit theirs. But in the meantime, the data is
out there. (You can work with it, if you wish, using our splendid JSON
interface. But it's subject to change, I'm afraid.) Again, the nice
thing about the semantic web is that you can do this - gradually
pulling together the strands of meaning using a common vocabulary as
that vocabulary is developed. It might become a bit of a wild west in
some areas, but those areas are explicitly fenced in with URI
prefixes.The key is that our object identifiers - the URIs and LSIDs
for the taxa and names - will remain persistent. Over time, we can
clarify, enrich, and correct what we say *about the things that those
identifiers identify*.
Yes! I don't intend for the URI for the image
So: yes, we have a custom, idiosyncratic vocabulary, we declare
and use nonstandard types and properties, we declare owl:domain - but I
believe it's been properly done at the "machine" level. At the higher
level, it's a work-in-progress. It helps to have something concrete to
discuss, I think. When I was discussing using the DwC properties and
types in our RDF, of putting it out on the web, I was thinking of a
timeframe of weeks, not years.
There has been the suggestion made by several people that we need a
second kind of Darwin Core, an RDF recommendation that will allow for
deep semantic reasoning. That might be nice, but given the amount of
discussion that it's taken just to come to an agreement about what a
dwc:Individual should be, I think "years" would be an accurate estimate
for that task. What I personally really want is a recommendation for
Darwin Core RDF "Lite". That is, a quick (and possibly dirty for the
time being) set of guidelines for using DwC terms AS THEY EXIST in RDF
with only the minimal number of changes or additions necessary to get
the job done. THAT is something that I could see happening in a
timeframe of weeks, not years.