1. Authority control, new library standards, and the Semantic Web
Gordon Dunsire
Presented to the Authority Control Interest Group (ACIG) meeting, ALA Annual, New Orleans, 26 June 2011

2. Overview RDA, FRBR, FRAD and authority control
Extending authority control concepts to data linking
Linked data and the Semantic Web

3. RDA implementation scenario 1: Relational/object-oriented database structure
FRAD
FRBR

4. Bibliographic record: 12345
Name authority record: 8765
Title:
Cataloguing is fun!
Heading:
MacDonald, Mary
Author:
Mary MacDonald
8765
Place of birth:
9876
Edinburgh
Content type:
text
1234
LCSH authority record: 5432
Media type:
5432
microform
Heading:
Cataloging
LCSH:
Cataloging
5432
See also:
Books
65443
RDA content type record: 1234
Term:
text
Definition:
Content expressed through a form of notation for language intended to be perceived visually.
ISBD media type record: 5432
Term:
microform
Definition:
Media used to store reduced-size images, not readable to the human eye, and designed for use with a device such as a microfilm or microfiche reader.

5. Bibliographic record: 12345
Name authority record: 8765
Title:
Cataloguing is fun!
Heading:
MacDonald, Mary
Author:
8765
Place of birth:
9876
Content type:
1234
Media type:
5432
Stop! Ambiguous: link not safe.
LCSH:
5432
Identifier: ok to link.
12345
8765
Author
8765
Heading
“MacDonald, Mary”
8765
Heading
“MacDonald, Mary”
12345
8765
Author
8765
Place of birth
9876
8765
Place of birth
9876
9876
Name
“Edinburgh”
9876
Name
“Edinburgh”
12345
8765
Author
8765
Place of birth
9876
9876
Country
4567
9876
Country
4567

6. Linked data is not a new idea!
It extends concepts of authority control
“Preferred” labels
Create/maintain once; link many times
Re-use of metadata
More than one “attribute” associated with a “heading”
E.g. Place of birth of person with name heading
Concepts can be applied to authority records
As well as bibliographic description records
Full extension leads to “record” dis-aggregation
All “records” in bibliographic control systems

7. Linked data and RDF Resource Description Framework (RDF)
Designed for machine-processing of metadata at global scale (Semantic Web)
24/7/365
Trillions of operations per second
Everything must be dis-ambiguated
Machines are dumb
Simplicity helps!
Machine-readable identifiers

8. RDF triple Metadata expressed as “atomic” statements
A simple, single, irreducible statement
The title of this book is “Cataloguing is fun!”
Constructed in 3 parts
“Triple”
Subject of the statement = Subject: This book
Nature of the statement = Predicate: has title
Value of the statement = Object: “Cataloguing is fun!”
This book – has title – “Cataloguing is fun!”
subject – predicate - object

9. 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)

10. Uniform Resource Identifier
Can be any unique combination of numbers and letters
No intrinsic meaning; it’s just an identifier
Can look like a URL
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 (“Cataloguing is fun!”)

11. RDF properties Predicates are called properties in RDF
“Verbal” part of the metadata statement
E.g. “A has author B”, “B has heading ...”
Properties link specific instances of two things
A = a specific book, B = a specific person
... = a specific label, character string, annotation
=> a “literal”
Properties are the links in linked data, the pathways through the Semantic Web to human-readable metadata

12. Labels, global identifiers, linked data
Headings can be managed in the same way as other controlled vocabularies
They are all RDF labels
Global identifiers (URIs) and RDF allow distributed authority control
But without need to copy and maintain in local systems
Different labels for the same thing can be linked, and a chain can link a label to a resource
Its all linked data ...

13. Thank you gordon@gordondunsire.com Sponsors ALA
Cataloging & Classification Quarterly
MARCIVE, Inc.