1. ISBD for the Semantic Web: namespaces, elements, vocabularies, application profile Gordon Dunsire Presented at the seminar Libraries and the Semantic Web: the role of International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD), National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, 25 Feb 2011

2. Semantic Web “machine-readable metadata” Faster! 24/7/365! Global! Metadata expressed as “atomic” statements A simple, single, irreducible statement The title of this book is “Treasure island” In a standard machine-processable format Resource Description Framework (RDF)

3. Resource Description Framework Metadata statement constructed in 3 parts “Triple” The title of this book is “Treasure island” Subject of the statement = Subject: This book Nature of the statement = Predicate: has title Value of the statement = Object: “Treasure island” This book – has title – “Treasure island” subject – predicate - object

4. Identifiers Need unambiguous way of identifying each part of the triple for efficient machine-processing Human labels (“This book”, “has title”) no good Same thing, different labels; different things, same label Exploit the utility of the URL Machine-readable, regular syntax, unambiguous Uniform Resource Identifier (URI)

5. Uniform Resource Identifier Can be any unique combination of numbers and letters No intrinsic meaning; it’s just an identifying label Can look like a URL http://iflastandards.info/ns/isbd/elements/P1001 But does not lead to a Web page (in principle ...) RDF requires the subject and predicate of triple to be URIs Object can be a URI, or a literal string (“Treasure island”)

6. Namespaces URI can be constructed from a base plus a unique, identifying suffix http://iflastandards.info/ns/isbd/elements/ + P1001 Base is known as a namespace Can be abbreviated by human programmer “isbd” = http://iflastandards.info/ns/isbd/elements/ isbd:P1001 Machine expands abbreviation for processing

7. Everything as triples in RDF Every aspect of the metadata must be expressed in RDF to be machine-processable Metadata about real-world objects (books, people, etc.) Metadata about the predicates (definition, label, scope, etc.) Common predicates apply to many types of thing (human-readable label, etc.) High-level RDF namespaces (rdfs, owl) RDF is expressed in RDF (“bootstrap”)

8. Creating namespaces and URIs ISBD is using the Open Metadata Registry Can assign a running “number” to the base to create a new URI Set of properties for creating basic triples Properties = predicates rdfs:label for assigning a human-readable label to the subject isbd:P1001 - rdfs:label - “has content form”

13. Subject Predicate Object isbd:P1001 rdfs:label “has content form”

18. Subject Predicate Object isbdcf:T1008 skos:prefLabel “spoken word”

19. Application profile Need a way to specify how a useful “record” can be constructed from RDF triples Which triples are involved, and from which namespaces? Sequence? Repeatable? Mandatory? Sub-component aggregations Publication statement = place + name + date Content rules?

20. Mandatory Not repeatable Aggregation of simpler elements Syntax of aggregation (punctuation)