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

Wed Oct 6 09:02:26 CEST 2010

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" <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 <http://www.taxonconcept.org/> / GeoSpecies
> Knowledge Base <http://lod.geospecies.org/>
> About the GeoSpecies Knowledge Base <http://about.geospecies.org/>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> --
> 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) 343-6707http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu
>
>

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------
Pete DeVries
Department of Entomology
University of Wisconsin - Madison
445 Russell Laboratories
1630 Linden Drive
Madison, WI 53706
TaxonConcept Knowledge Base <http://www.taxonconcept.org/> / GeoSpecies
Knowledge Base <http://lod.geospecies.org/>
About the GeoSpecies Knowledge Base <http://about.geospecies.org/>
------------------------------------------------------------
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