[TopicMapsInLIS] Explaining Topic Maps to Library Scientists

[Alexander Johannesen]

Steve Pepper:
> Are there any other equivalent materials available on the web?

Not so much a paper, but I've got at least two relevant blog entries ;

   http://shelter.nu/blog-159.html
   http://shelter.nu/blog/2006/05/epistemological-implications-of-topic.html

> I would be grateful for
> feedback from the experts on this list.

As an intro to the tech-side of TM, I think it's just fine although I
suspect librarians will want to know more about how it could fit into
existing LIS. As such, the fact that Topic Maps is a meta data model
in which you can model whatever else you have, it's perfect for things
like FRBR (which is in the hotspot these days) and even RDA (or other
rulesets). Topic Maps of course can normalise and provide a semantic
model for everything you put into MARC / MODS / XOBIS / EAD. It can
help you model things you're trying to model, of course. It can, as
the paper indicates, hold thesauri (I've done the APAIS thesauri in a
TM service, for example), navigation facets, all sorts of lookup
materials. There really is no end to it with a bit of imagination.

The problem, I suspect, mostly lies with proper persistent
identification of things. Currently the best we've got are authority
files (which basically is MARC records with lots of look-up
information in them for authors and sometimes organisations, which
needs to be parsed and sorted), but what does not exist (and which I
personally think would be the single most important role for the
future of mankind!) but needs to happen is responsibilities for
creating PSI sets of things. In many ways it is the perfect role for
the libraries of the world, certainly for some areas.

Anyway, hopefully this mailing-list will spawn some fruitful work and
discussions.


Regards,

Alexander (National Library of Australia)
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