Deutschen Nationalbibliothek URIs

[Ed Summers]

I recently wrote up some thoughts about the availability of a large
amount of data for people, corporate bodies and subjects at the
Deutschen Nationalbibliothek [1]. I wanted to generally explain why I
thought the data release was important, and didn't want to descend
into pedantic details about HTTP response codes and such. But this is
the friendly and ironic pedantic-web, so I thought I'd briefly raise
the question here.

Isn't the case that this URL for Herta Müller:

http://d-nb.info/gnd/119053071

identifies a Document about her:

ed@curry:~$ curl -I http://d-nb.info/gnd/119053071
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2010 12:22:49 GMT
Server: Apache
Content-Language: de-DE
Content-Length: 16384
Content-Type: text/html;charset=UTF-8

If I request application/rdf+xml for that URL I get redirected to
http://d-nb.info/gnd/119053071/about

ed@curry:~$ curl -i --header "Accept: application/rdf+xml"
http://d-nb.info/gnd/119053071
HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2010 12:25:23 GMT
Server: Apache
Location: http://d-nb.info/gnd/119053071/about
Content-Length: 0
Content-Type: text/html

But the RDF coming back actually describes the Document URL:

rapper -o turtle http://d-nb.info/gnd/119053071/about
@prefix rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#> .
@prefix geopol: <http://aims.fao.org/aos/geopolitical.owl#> .
@prefix gnd: <http://d-nb.info/gnd/> .
@prefix rdaRelGr2:
<http://metadataregistry.org/uri/schema/RDARelationshipsGR2/> .
@prefix sg: <http://d-nb.info/ddc-sg/> .
@prefix skos: <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#> .
@prefix rdaGr2: <http://RDVocab.info/ElementsGr2/> .
@prefix dnb: <http://d-nb.info/> .
@prefix persRelCont:
<http://www.contentus-projekt.info/ontologies/PersonRelationsContentusD2.owl#>
.
@prefix ddc: <http://d-nb.info/ddc/class/> .
@prefix rdaFrbr: <http://RDVocab.info/uri/schema/FRBRentitiesRDA/> .
@prefix foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/> .
@prefix owl: <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#> .
@prefix relationship: <http://purl.org/vocab/relationship/> .
@prefix dcterms: <http://purl.org/dc/terms/> .
@prefix rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .

<http://d-nb.info/gnd/119053071>
rdaGr2:biographicalInformation "Rumän.-dt. Schriftstellerin
und Essayistin, lebt seit 1987 in Deutschland,
Literaturnobelpreisträgerin 2009"@de ;
rdaGr2:dateOfBirth "1953" ;
rdaGr2:identifierForThePerson "(DE-588)119053071",
"(DE-588c)4293331-6", "(DLC)n 86833524" ;
rdaGr2:placeOfBirth "Nitzkydorf (Banat)"@de ;
rdaGr2:placeOfResidence "Berlin"@de ;
rdaGr2:professionOrOccupation <http://d-nb.info/gnd/4053311-6> ;
gnd:countryCodeForThePerson "XA-RO" ;
gnd:preferredNameForThePerson [
gnd:foreName "Herta" ;
gnd:surname "Müller" ;
gnd:usedRules "RAK-WB"
], "Müller, Herta" ;
gnd:studyPathsOfThePerson "Germanistik, Romanistik"@de ;
gnd:variantNameForThePerson [
gnd:foreName "Cherta" ;
gnd:surname "Myller" ;
gnd:usedRules "RAK-WB"
], [
gnd:personalName "Heta-Mulei" ;
gnd:usedRules "RAK-WB"
], [
gnd:foreName "Heta" ;
gnd:surname "Mulei" ;
gnd:usedRules "RAK-WB"
], [
gnd:foreName "Herta" ;
gnd:surname "Müller" ;
gnd:usedRules "AACR"
], [
gnd:foreName "Heruta" ;
gnd:surname "Myurā" ;
gnd:usedRules "RAK-WB"
], "Heta-Mulei", "Mulei, Heta", "Müller, Herta", "Myller,
Cherta", "Myurā, Heruta" ;
owl:sameAs <http://dbpedia.org/resource/Herta_M%C3%BCller>,
<http://viaf.org/viaf/12324250> ;
foaf:page <http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herta_M%C3%BCller> .

I just wanted to double check that my analysis is correct: if the DNB
wants to follow the Linked Data pattern outlined in Cool URIs for the
Semantic Web, they should slightly modify the HTTP behavior at URIs
like http://d-nb.info/gnd/119053071

Your patience, irony and pedantic-ness are appreciated :-)

//Ed

[1] http://inkdroid.org/journal/2010/10/19/linked-library-data-at-the-deutschen-nationalbibliothek/

[Richard Cyganiak]

See previous thread on this list:
http://groups.google.com/group/pedantic-web/browse_frm/thread/a83d47c5fb989531/bbbfd27e277029aa

I dimly remember being cc'ed in an off-list email exchange with the
developers of the service, where they said they don't see why this is
a problem, and they want to leave it as is, at least for this release
of the service. But searching through my email archive I can't find
that message, so maybe I misremember.

Best,
Richard

[Neubert Joachim]

Hi Richard,

The statement you remember is also on the the DNB FAQ site at http://www.d-nb.de/hilfe/service/linked_data_faq.htm#uri (in German).

Cheers, Joachim

> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: pedant...@googlegroups.com
> [mailto:pedant...@googlegroups.com] Im Auftrag von Richard Cyganiak
> Gesendet: Mittwoch, 20. Oktober 2010 16:36
> An: pedant...@googlegroups.com
> Cc: Neubert Joachim
> Betreff: Re: [pedantic-web] Deutschen Nationalbibliothek URIs

[Richard Cyganiak]

Joachim,

On 20 Oct 2010, at 15:50, Neubert Joachim wrote:
> The statement you remember is also on the the DNB FAQ site at http://www.d-nb.de/hilfe/service/linked_data_faq.htm#uri
> (in German).

Yes -- I think that's the statement I remembered. Shortened translation:

“In general one distinguishes concepts and their descriptions. But we
don't need a separate URI for the HTML representation at this time
because we never refer to the HTML representation. This could be
changed later on if new requirements emerge. At this time we focus
instead on implementing more data and improving the modelling.”

Best,
Richard

[Ed Summers]

On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 10:36 AM, Richard Cyganiak <ric...@cyganiak.de> wrote:
> See previous thread on this list:
> http://groups.google.com/group/pedantic-web/browse_frm/thread/a83d47c5fb989531/bbbfd27e277029aa

Thanks for pointing out the previous discussion about the DNB
data--and the translation. So it sounds like this is an intentional
move...which makes it a bit more interesting :-)

//Ed