[tdwg-tag] string literals vs. uris for dwc:recordedBy, dwc:identifiedBy, and dwc:georeferencedBy in RDF

[Bob Morris]

Exactly this example is given in
http://web4.w3.org/TR/REC-rdf-syntax/#section-Syntax-property-attributes
so I would find it regrettable if DwC does something somewhere that
makes this substitution impossible or discouraged,  or encourages tool
construction that does so, or encourages documention be interpreted in
a way that does so.

Indeed http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/rdf/dwcterms.rdf defines its type to be
rdf:Property and is silent on any semantics  but that. My own
conclusion is that neither the intent or the outcome of the rdf
version of dwcterms discourages what you want, though I suppose the
intent part would be clearer if the documentation also said that a URI
can always be used, but applications are responsible for interpreting
it.


On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 11:09 AM, Steve Baskauf
<steve.baskauf at vanderbilt.edu> wrote:
> The definition for the Darwin Core term recordedBy
> http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/index.htm#recordedBy
> says "A list (concatenated and separated) of names ...".  The examples
> given are string literals.  However, when using this term as a predicate
> in RDF, it would seem preferable to use a URI to an RDF representation
> of the entity (if one exists) rather than a string literal.  For
> example, can I use:
> <dwc:recordedBy
> rdf:resource="http://people.vanderbilt.edu/~steve.baskauf/foaf.rdf#me"/>
> rather than
> <dwc:recordedBy>Steven J. Baskauf</dwc:recordedBy>
> ?
>
> Steve Baskauf
> --
>
> Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer
> Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences
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-- 
Robert A. Morris
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UMASS-Boston
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