MODS and RDF Call: 2017-08-21

Owned by Eben English
Last updated: Sept 15, 2017
2 min read

Time: 9am PDT / Noon EDT

Call-In Info:  712-775-7035 (Access Code: 960009)

Homework:  White paper comments and Collaboration document spreadsheet clean-up 

Moderator: Eben English

Primary Notetaker: Danny Pucci (Etherpad link: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/MODS_and_RDF_Call__2017-08-21)

Attendees:

Agenda:

  1. White paper: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ffCyIirUkESLefBehafbacsLb_Rq7KJbTxxeoQCyLpw/edit#heading=h.7y094mt5y4wo

    1. Keeping this on the agenda as a placeholder to review periodically.


  2. Collaboration Documents spreadsheet review and clean-up: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jhguUHc4ZbzhOwCvLppReepMu4pW3aNIdAkGQs4xA60/edit#gid=0 - Items listed as "Draft" or "Draft; under review":

    1. relatedItem (MODS Individual Mappings for Other Related Item Cases)
      1. use cases gathered but not turned into RDF yet, Eben working on that for next meeting

    2. titleInfo

      1. Got rid of RDF back to MODS XML (no longer necessary).

      2. RDFS lable vs. SKOS pref label - Julie changed to preferred RDFS label

      3. Alternative title and translated title - opaque properties have been removed, replaced with DC elements with SKOS pref labels.

      4. Regarding opaque:titleForSort, Eben thinks this might be extraneous. System logic would work this out (Solr, for example), so maybe not necessary? Members seemed to agree, so Julie will remove from Title examples.

    3. name

      1. Got rid of RDF back to MODS XML (no longer necessary).

      2. How to use affiliation vs. legal name? Julie says these examples are now correct. Whether this is how we want to do this is a different question. Current resolution may not be ideal, but all there is for now; affiliation seems to be infrequently used anyway. Julie will clean up the language in the note to better reflect that the example (complex, line 21) is not reflective of the issue described in the note.

      3. MARC relator vs. DC Creator/Contributor - Question, Is it better to use DC Creator/Contributor when those are the only known roles; then, if more specific role, use MARC relator? Eben thinks, from a programming standpoint, easiest to stick with a single vocabulary; but if human-readability is DC might be better. Julie says Hyrax install would also be easier with DCE predicates (accept strings). Suggested compromise, use DCE if there is NO URI for the creator, but if there IS a URI for the creator, use MARC relator. Julie says she will check again to make sure examples follow this rule.

      4. opaque:nameOrder - syntax in example (line 29) may not be valid. We do need to preserve order (important for scientific publications, for example). HOMEWORK - look into how to ensure the statement is syntactically accurate. Julie will look into this.

    4. subject

      1. We are still a little murky regarding temporal subjects. Members were supposed to collect local usage examples and needs.

      2. So far no examples; temporal examples in lines 22-26. One approach: turn anything that CAN be turned into specific dates INTO those dates, formatted using EDM timespan. Maybe use dce:coverage to accept number values, then dcterms temporal to accept strings (e.g., French Revolution). More discussion NEXT call.

      3. Scale/projection - Simon says these should not be in subject; belong somewhere else, or at least a subject of their own. These should be moved to their own to values on the main object, so we don't need to mint anything.

    5. recordInfo

      1. Homework: for those institutions that have these use cases, research alternate predicates for original/external record creation and change dates (distinct from Fedora activity)

  3. Next meeting: Monday 9/18 at 12 PM EST