[tdwg-content] Idea for Discussion, Differentiating between "type's" of identifiers

Wed Oct 6 10:01:53 CEST 2010

For labels, would it perhaps make sense to use skos:prefLabel and skos:altLabel?

On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 8:02 AM, Peter DeVries <pete.devries at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Steve,
> You are probably right that it might be best to use rdfs:Label, but I am
> thinking we might be able to get the same
> result my defining the string variants as subproperties of rdfs:Label.
> This would make them an rdfs:Label but a special kind of rdfs:Label.
> This is one of those things that I would test with Sindice and URIburner to
> see if they interpret these correctly.
> This would require a live vocabulary that Sindice could look at to determine
> that hasScientificName is to be
> treated as a  rdfs:Label.
> - Pete
>
> On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 10:41 AM, Steve Baskauf
> <steve.baskauf at vanderbilt.edu> wrote:
>>
>> Although this specific example deals with taxonomic name identifiers, it
>> is related to a previous discussion on this list about how we should use the
>> dwc:xxxxxID terms and other terms (such as recordedBy and identifiedBy) that
>> could have either a string (literal) or URI form.  Although I don't really
>> want to see an unnecessary proliferation of Darwin Core terms, I think that
>> in the interest of clarity (particularly where RDF is involved) there either
>> should be multiple terms that make it clear what form of identifier is
>> expected, or else there should be an understanding that in RDF the default
>> for such a term is a URI which would then have an rdfs:Label property which
>> was the string form.  I think the former would be preferable to the latter.
>>
>> I came to this opinion when trying to write RDF describing an herbarium
>> specimen.  The collector should be the dwc:recordedBy property of the
>> specimen.  Optimally, there would be a database in which known collectors
>> were assigned URIs so that "Glen N. Montz", "Glen Montz", "G. N. Montz",
>> etc. would all be different labels for the same resource.  However,
>> realistically, I'm not going to drop what I'm doing to set up such a
>> database (even if I were capable of doing it, which I'm not).  So I ended up
>> just writing it as <dwc:recordedBy>Glen N. Montz</dwc:recordedBy> even
>> though I knew it wasn't probably the best thing.  In a large Occurrence
>> database that was compiled from the RDF created by a lot of people, there
>> might end up being a mixture of strings and URIs for dwc:recordedBy
>> properties of the specimens.  It seems to me like it would be better to have
>> properties like dwc:recordedBy for strings and dwc:recordedByURI for a
>> corresponding URI (and I suppose dwc:recordedByLSID if anyone wants to use
>> it).  Of course, this would require a number of term additions to DwC and
>> clarification in the DwC documentation that the generic version was intended
>> for strings.
>>
>> With respect to the example
>> <dwc:hasScientificNameLSID
>> rdf:resource="urn:lsid:catalogueoflife.org:taxon:24e7d624-60a7-102d-be47-00304854f810:ac2010"/>
>> I think you are right that (with the possible exception of rdfs:seeAlso)
>> there is an expectation that an rdf:resource attribute will be a resolvable
>> URI that produces RDF.  So
>>
>> <dwc:hasScientificNameLSID>urn:lsid:catalogueoflife.org:taxon:24e7d624-60a7-102d-be47-00304854f810:ac2010</dwc:hasScientificNameLSID>
>> is probably better.
>>
>> Steve
>>
>> Peter DeVries wrote:
>>
>> I have been thinking about the following pattern. In part after looking at
>> the GBIF vocabulary.
>> I am not sure if it is even a good idea but might be worth some
>> discussion.
>> For those fields that have both a string and "ID" form maybe the following
>> pattern might be useful
>> hasScientificName = string form
>> hasScientificNameURI = Resolvable LOD compliant identifier
>> hasScientificNameLSID = LSID identifier which could be resolvable once you
>> add the "http:proxy" etc.
>> This allows all three forms to be included if desired, it also provides a
>> hint as to how the field should be interpreted or resolved.
>> One group could also provide a mapping service so that each record does
>> not need to include all three forms, but would allow systems
>> to find the matching LSID for a given URI or vs. versa.
>> My concern was that it would be difficult to infer how a scientificNameID
>> should be interpreted by other systems.
>> Is this an LSD, is it a URI, is it a UUID etc. ?
>> This impacts the structure of the RDF.
>> * Note that the actual identifiers might not be correct, the example below
>> is more about the form of the RDF
>> * For instance, I don't think it is probably correct to see the COL LSID
>> as just a namestring
>> * Also in this example the GNI name does not exactly match the string name
>> <dwc:hasScientificName>Puma concolor (Linnaeus
>> 1771)</dwc:hasScientificName>
>> <dwc:hasScientificNameURI
>> rdf:resource="http://gni.globalnames.org/name_strings/6c3dc35f-d901-5cc5-b9c8-ad241069b9f8"/>
>> <dwc:hasScientificNameLSID
>> rdf:resource="urn:lsid:catalogueoflife.org:taxon:24e7d624-60a7-102d-be47-00304854f810:ac2010"/>
>> Some system may choke on the LSID form assuming that it uses a standard
>> resolution mechanism
>> So it might be best to use this form
>>
>> <dwc:hasScientificNameLSID>urn:lsid:catalogueoflife.org:taxon:24e7d624-60a7-102d-be47-00304854f810:ac2010</dwc:hasScientificNameLSID>
>> - Pete
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------
>> Pete DeVries
>> Department of Entomology
>> University of Wisconsin - Madison
>> 445 Russell Laboratories
>> 1630 Linden Drive
>> Madison, WI 53706
>> TaxonConcept Knowledge Base / GeoSpecies Knowledge Base
>> About the GeoSpecies Knowledge Base
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> --
>> Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer
>> Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences
>>
>> postal mail address:
>> VU Station B 351634
>> Nashville, TN  37235-1634,  U.S.A.
>>
>> delivery address:
>> 2125 Stevenson Center
>> 1161 21st Ave., S.
>> Nashville, TN 37235
>>
>> office: 2128 Stevenson Center
>> phone: (615) 343-4582,  fax: (615) 343-6707
>> http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu
>
>
>
> --
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> Pete DeVries
> Department of Entomology
> University of Wisconsin - Madison
> 445 Russell Laboratories
> 1630 Linden Drive
> Madison, WI 53706
> TaxonConcept Knowledge Base / GeoSpecies Knowledge Base
> About the GeoSpecies Knowledge Base
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>
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>

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