BIBFRAME Annotation Model

http://bibframe.org/documentation/annotations/20130430.html

BIBFRAME Community Draft, 30 April

2013

This version:

http://bibframe.org/documentation/annotations/20130430.html

Latest version:

http://bibframe.org/documentation/annotations

Previous version:

none

Editor:

Ray Denenberg, Library of Congress

Contributors (in alphabetical order):

Jan Ashton, British Library

Karim Boughida, George Washington University Libraries

Alan Danskin, British Library

Corine Deliot, British Library

Nancy Fallgren, National Library of Medicine

Ted Fons, OCLC

Kevin Ford, Library of Congress

Jean Godby, OCLC

Uche Ogbuji, Zepheira

Rebecca Guenther, Library of Congress

Reinhold Heuvelmann, German National Library

Sally McCallum, Library of Congress

Eric Miller, Zepheira

Jackie Shieh, George Washington University Libraries

Nate Trail, Library of Congress

Beacher Wiggins, Library of Congress

 

Abstract

BIBFRAME early experimenters express BIBFRAME Annotations in different and

ad hoc ways as there is as yet no BIBFRAME Annotation model or vocabulary for

expressing an Annotation. This document presents a framework to express and

exchange BIBFRAME Annotations.

Status of this DocumentThis section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication.

Other documents may supersede this document.

This document has been made available to the BIBFRAME Community for

review, but is not endorsed by them. This is a working draft, and it is not endorsed

by the Library of Congress. It is inappropriate to refer to this document other than

as "work in progress".

Please send general comments about this document to the public Bibliographic

Framework Initiative discussion list.

Table of Contents1. Introduction

1. Aims of the Model

2. Use Cases

3. Terminology

2. What is an Annotation?

1. What is a BIBFRAME Annotation?

2. Roles

3. RDF Representation

4. Annotation Forms and Examples

1. Form 1: External Annotation - External Body (Cover Art)

2. Form 2: External Annotation - Inline Body - Literal (Publisher Description)

3. Form 3: External Annotation - Inline Body - Structured Data (Publisher

Description)

4. Form 4: Inline Annotation - Inline Body - Structured Data (Contributor

Biographical Information)

5. A Non Annotation (Contributor Biographical Information)

5. Annotation Class

1. BIBFRAME Annotation Classes

6. Summary of BIBFRAME Annotation Properties and Classes

7. Appendix A: BIBFRAME Annotation Classes Under Consideration (Non

Normative Appendix)

1. Holdings

2. Provenance

3. Condition and Action

4. Classification

8. Appendix B: Relationship to Open Annotation Model (Non Normative

Appendix)

9. Acknowledgements

 

Introduction Comments on the web about photos, videos, and articles; reviews of restaurants

and books -- these are considered, informally, to be web Annotations. The act of

annotating is widespread on the web.

In the BIBFRAME context, a review of a BIBFRAME Work, Instance, or Authority

is considered an Annotation of that resource. Review is one of several potential

categories of information to be treated as Annotations. Other categories include

contributor biographical information, publisher description, cover art, and sample

text.

Aims of the ModelThe BIBFRAME model defines four core resource classes: Work, Instance,

Authority, and Annotation. This aim of this model is to define BIBFRAME

Annotations and enable them to be expressed and exchanged interoperably and

efficiently.

It is also the aim of this model to be compatible when appropriate with other

Annotation community efforts. Where appropriate, the model draws on the W3C

community draft,Open Annotation Model (OAM): Open Annotation Core Data

Model dated February 8, 2013.

Use Cases Following are use case scenarios motivating the development of the BIBFRAME

Annotation model.

Review. A particular book has several reviews. These reviews are published

and are available to any library who holds a copy of the book. Each library

may choose to advertise or ignore any given review. A public library and a

research library, both holding copies, may choose to advertise different

reviews.

Contributor Biographical Information. Various libraries publish

biographical information about authors. Blue River Library optains a copy of

the book Plum Island, by DeMille. The library publishes "Contributor

Biographical Information" about DeMille, selecting from among the various

published biographical descriptions for the author.

Publisher Description. Similarly, various libraries provide descriptions of

publishers. A BIBFRAME Instance for Plum Island in paperback published by

Grand Central Publishing might include a "Publisher Description" for that

publisher, selected from among the various published descriptions.

Sample Text. Various libraries publish sample text from a book. A

BIBFRAME Instance might include "Sample Text " selected from among the

various published samples.

Cover Art. A science journal invites artists to submit illustrations to be used

as possible cover art for an upcoming issue. Artists submit their Illustrations

and the journal selects one.

Table of Contents. Several libraries have a particular Instance of a book.

Some of these Instances have a table of contents, and some do not.  Where

one does, a library might assert the table of contents as an Annotation. Those

libraries where the Instance does not have a table of contents can select

among those asserted and choose one.

TerminologyThe key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",

"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in

this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.

What is an Annotation? For the basic definition of Annotation

we draw from the OAM: An Annotation is

"the expression of a relationship

between two resources: the Annotation

Body and the Annotation Target. It

conveys that the Body is somehow about

the Target". The "aboutness" of an

Annotation may be conveyed by its

Class, for example: Review, CoverArt, Comment or Description. Each Annotation

category is a Class, ontologically speaking.There are Annotation Classes specific

to BIBFRAME (the examples above) and there are Annotation classes defined in

external namespaces, for example Comment and Description. Specific

Annotation classes are all subclasses of the general class Annotation; thus an

Annotation which expresses that it is, for example, of class Review, expresses

not only that it is a review, but more generally, an Annotation.

What is a BIBFRAME Annotation? For purposes of this model, a BIBFRAME Work, Instance, or Authority is an

abstract resource. Different institutions may have different views of any given

BIBFRAME Work, Instance, or Authority. For example, for a given BIBFRAME

Work, InstitutionA and InstitutionB may each have a view of the Work,  bf:Work A

and bf:Work B.

Certain information is integral to a Work  - title and author, for example - and

might be reasonably expected to be reflected in both views. Other information

might be part of one view but not the other - information asserted (possibly by a

third party) about the Work, which Institution A chooses to integrate into its view

but Institution B chooses not to (or vice versa).

A BIBFRAME Annotation is an assertion, by any party, about a BIBFRAME

resource (Work, Instance, or Authority) that any institution holding a view of

that resource may choose to integrate into its view, or choose not to.

Roles The parties and objects involved in a BIBFRAME Annotation are:

The Target of the Annotation: A BIBFRAME Work, Instance, or Authority. The

book, in part 1 of the illustration below.

The Annotation Body, which is the payload of the Annotation. The book

review below.

An author, artist, reviewer, etc. who writes the Annotation Body. (This role is

not represented formally in the Annotation model, but is mentioned here to

clearly distinguish it from the Annotator.) The Reviewer below.

The Annotator, who asserts the Annotation. (The Annotator is not

necessarily the same party as the author, etc. who wrote the Annotation.) The

Annotator in part 2 of the illustration.

The Annotation itself , which points to the Body, Target, and Annotator. The

Annotation, in part 2 of the illustration.

Illustration

Part 1: A reviewer writes a review of a book:

 

Part 2: A third party (the "Annotator") upon discovering the book review,

documents the fact that this review is a review of that book. The Annotator

asserts an Annotation:

RDF RepresentationAnnotations described in this specification are represented as RDF (Resource

Description Framework), either RDF triples or RDF/XML.

The prefix bf: denotes the BIBFRAME namespace, and the following properties

are defined:

bf:annotationBody. Used when the Body is expressed as a resource.

bf:annotationBodyLiteral. Used when the Body is expressed as a literal.

bf:annotates. Expresses the Annotation Target.

bf:annotationAssertedBy. Expresses the "Annotator" role (described in the

Roles section above).

The basic BIBFRAME Annotation takes the following form.

{Annotation URI} a bf:Annotation ;

bf:annotationBody {Annotation Body URI} ;

bf:annotates {Annotation Target} ;

bf:annotationAssertedBy {BIBFRAME Authority} .

 

In this canonical form, the Body is external to the Annotation, and the Annotation

itself is external to the Target.

There are variations:

the Body might be inline within the Annotation, while the Annotation is still

external to the resource. In this case: o the Annotation may be expressed as a literal, or

o it may be structured data (an RDF "blank node").

The Annotation itself may be inline within the resource.

So we distinguish four basic BIBFRAME annotation forms.

1. External Annotation - External Body

The canonical form shown above.

2. External Annotation - Inline Body - Literal

Triples:

{Annotation URI} a {Annotation class} ;

bf:annotationBodyLiteral {literal} ;

bf:annotates{URI of Annotation

Target} ;

bf:annotationAssertedBy{BIBFRAME

Authority} .

 

3. External Annotation - Inline Body - Structured Data

Triples:

{Annotation URI} a {Annotation class} ;

bf:annotationBody {structured data} ;

bf:annotates{URI of Annotation

Target} ;

bf:annotationAssertedBy{BIBFRAME

Authority} .

4. Inline Annotation - Inline Body - Structured Data

Triples (within the Target):

bf:annotation Structure1 .

Structure1 a {Annotation Class} ;

bf:annotationBody Structure2.

Structure2 bf:annotationAssertedBy{BIBFRAME

Authority} ;

...........{remainder of Annotation Body structure}

 

Note that no form is described for "Inline Annotation - Inline Body - Literal". This is

because an inline Annotation should include an indication of who asserted the

Annotation, i.e. property bf:annotationAssertedBy, and therefore the Body cannot

be represented as a simple literal.

Annotation Forms and ExamplesExamples in this section correspond to the forms described above.

Parenthesis are used to mean "goes here". For example, in this triple:

<resources/annotation/

annotation1>

bf:annotationAssertedB

y

(An

Authority

for Library

of

Congress)

.

(An Authority for Library of Congress) means "an Authority for 'Library of

Congress' goes here."

Form 1: External Annotation -

External Body (Cover Art) In this example we look at a cover art Annotation.

The BIBFRAME Work resources/work/work1 which represents the book "Wildlife

sanctuaries & the Audubon Society : places to hide and seek" has BIBFRAME

Instance resources/instance/instance1

Which has cover art at: resources/annotationBody/coverArt1

 

An Institution might assert that this image is cover art for the Instance:

 

The Annotation may be represented in RDF triples as:

<resources/annotation/

annotation1>a bf:CoverArt ;

bf:annotates<resources/instance/

instance1> ;

bf:annotationBod

y

<resources/

annotationBody/

coverArt1> ;

bf:annotationAss

ertedBy

(An Authority for Library of

Congress) .

 

Comparing the first line of this Annotation with the first line shown in the basic

form, note that in the latter, the object is bf:CoverArt. In the basic Annotation the

object is bf:Annotation. But bf:CoverArt is a subclass of bf:Annotation; thus the

first line reveals not only that this is cover art, but also that this is an Annotation.

Form 2: External Annotation - Inline

Body - Literal (Publisher Description) In this example we look at a publisher description Annotation. Here the Body of

the Annotation is included inline, within the Annotation.

We again look at the Instance:

resources/instance/instance1

"Wildlife sanctuaries & the Audubon Society : places to hide and seek",

There is a publisher description at:

resources/annotationBody/publisherDescription1

We will model an Annotation of class PublisherDescription, as an inline

Annotation.

We can do it two ways - first, where the content of the publisher description is

supplied as plain text.

<resources/annotation/

annotation2>a bf:PublisherDescription ;

bf:annotates<resources/instance/

instance1> ;

bf:annotationBody

Literal"John M. 'Frosty'

Anderson was one of

the National Audubon

Society's great 'living

legends.' . . . No one

has done more for

wildlife than this

modest man with the

best sense of humor

ever to come down

the pike." --from the

Foreword National

Audubon Society

sanctuaries across the

United States

preserve the unique

combinations of

plants, climates, soils,

and water that

endangered birds and

other animals require

to survive. Their

success stories

include the recovery

of the common and

snowy egrets, wood

storks, Everglade

kites, puffins, and

sandhill cranes, to

name only a few. In

this book, Frosty

Anderson describes

the development of

fifteen NAS

sanctuaries from

Maine to California

and from the Texas

coast to North Dakota.

Drawn from the

newsletter Places to

Hide and Seek, which

he edited during his

tenure as

Director/Vice

President of the

Wildlife Sanctuary

Department of the

NAS, these profiles

offer a personal, often

humorous look at the

daily and longer-term

activities involved in

protecting bird

habitats. Collectively,

they record an era in

conservation history

in which ordinary

people, without

benefit of Ph.D.'s,

became stewards of

the habitats in which

they had lived all their

lives. It's a story

worth preserving, and

it's entertainingly told

here by the man who

knows it best." .

bf:annotationAsser

tedBy

(An Authority for

University of Texas

Press) .

Form 3: External Annotation - Inline

Body - Structured Data (Publisher

Description)

In this example, the content of the publisher description is supplied as HTML - not

plain text as the previous example - and so it uses the W3C specification

Representing Content in RDF.

 

<resources/annotation/

annotation3>a bf:PublisherDescription ;

bf:annotates<resources/instance/

instance1> ;

bf:annotationAsser

tedBy

(An Authority for

University of Texas

Press) ;

bf:annotationBody genid:A21756 .

genid:A21756 a cnt:ContentAsText ;

cnt:chars

" <!DOCTYPE HTML

PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD

HTML 4.0

Transitional//EN">

<HTML>

<HEAD>

<TITLE>Publisher

description for Library of

Congress control

number

99044164</TITLE>

<meta

name="description"

content="Publisher

description">

<meta

name="keywords"

CONTENT="Wildlife

refuges United States,

National Audubon

Society">

</HEAD>

<BODY>

<h2>Publisher

description for Wildlife

sanctuaries & the

Audubon Society :

places to hide and

seek / John M. "Frosty"

Anderson.</h2>"

remainder of HTML ..... ;

dcterms:format 'text/html' .

 

(Note: the above example retains special characters, such as angle brackets, for

better readability. In order to validate this example these characters must first be

escaped.)

In this example the following namespaces are used:

Prefix Namespace Description

cnt http://www.w3.org/2011/content# Representing Content in RDF

dcterms http://purl.org/dc/terms/ Dublin Core Terms

Form 4: Inline Annotation - Inline

Body - Structured Data (Contributor

Biographical Information) In this example we look at a contributor biographical-information Annotation. Here

the Annotation annotates an Authority, rather than a Work or Instance.

In the previous two examples the Body of the Annotation is included inline within

the Annotation, but the Annotation is still external to the Target. Here the

Annotation is included within the resource it annotates.

The BIBFRAME Work resources/work/work2 includes an embedded BIBFRAME

Authority (the creator, represented by node genid:A21757) which has an

embedded Annotation, contributor biographical information, and the Annotation

has been asserted by the Library of Congress (bf:annotationAssertedBy).

The Annotation is represented by node genid:A21758. The Body is represented

by node genid:A21759.

The Target is not listed, because since it is an embedded Annotation, the Target

is assumed to be the resource in which it is embedded.

<resources/

work/work2>a bf:Work ;

bf:title"Order and progress : a political

history of Brazil" ;

bf:creator genid:A21757 .

genid:A21757 a bf:Name ;

bf:label "Schneider, Ronald M" .

bf:annotation genid:A21758 .

genid:A21758 a bf:ContributorBio ;

bf:annotationBod

ygenid:A21760 ;

bf:annotationAss

ertedBygenid:A21759 .

genid:A21759 a bf:Organization ;

bf:label

" Library of Congress. Latin

American, Portuguese, and Spanish

Division"  ;

 bf:hasIdLink

<

http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n8

2132729.html  >.

genid:A21760 a cnt:ContentAsText ;

cnt:chars

"Ronald M. Schneider is professor of

political science at QueensCollege,

City University of New York" .

A Non-Annotation (Contributor

Biographical Information)In this example, contributor biographical information is represented as integral to

the Work, not as an Annotation.

<resources/work/work3> a bf:Work ;

bf:title"Order and progress : a

political history of Brazil"

bf:creator genid:A21757 .

genid:A21757 a bf:Authority ;

bf:label "Schneider, Ronald M" ;

bf:contributorBio

"Ronald M. Schneider is

professor of political science

at QueensCollege, City

University of New York" .

 

The property bf:contributorBio is not an Annotation property; I.e. it is not a

subproperty of bf:annotation.

This example has nothing to do with Annotations, it is included in order to point

out that just because an Annotation class is defined for an information type, it is

still possible to represent information of that type as an integral part of a resource,

not an Annotation.

In fact the property bf:contributorBio is hypothetical; it is not in the BIBFRAME

vocabulary (at the time of publication of this draft). It has been used in this

example strictly for illustration.

Annotation Class An Annotation expresses its category by its class. This is illustrated in the cover

art Annotation example by the triple:

<resources/annotation/annotation1> a bf:CoverArt ;

 

This expresses that the Annotation is class bf:CoverArt. And since bf:CoverArt is

a subclass of bf:Annotation (as are all BIBFRAME Annotation classes), it also

expresses that this is an Annotation. In this case the class is defined in the bf:

namespace. The class of a BIBFRAME Annotation need not necessarily be a

BIBFRAME Annotation class - that is, it need not be in the bf:namespace; it may

be in the oa: namespace (see Appendix B), or in another appropriate namespace.

BIBFRAME should use Annotation classes from the bf: namespace when

appropriate. An Annotation class defined in an external namespace (e.g. oa:)

should be used only when that class is not defined in the bf: namespace.

There is no requirement to indicate an annotation class more specific than

bf:Annotation, thus:

http://example.com/annotationXYZ a bf:Annotation

is as valid as

http://example.com/annotationXYZ a bf:PublisherDescription

However it is recommended to provide as specific a class as is known.

BIBFRAME Annotation Classes The following table lists the BIBFRAME Annotation classes defined as of

publication of this document.

BIBFRAME Annotation Class Description

bf: ContributorBio Contributor biographical information.

bf:CoverArt Cover art.

bf:PublisherDescription Publisher description.

bf:SampleText Sample text.

bf:TableOfContents Table of contents.

bf:Review Review.

Summary of BIBFRAME Annotation Properties and Classes Properties

The following table lists Annotation properties in the bf: namespace.

Property Domain RangeSubpropert

y ofSubproperties

bf:annotation BIBFRAME

Work, Instance,

or Authority

bf:Annotation

bf:annotationBody bf:Annotation web resource

bf:annotationBodyLiteral bf:Annotation literal

bf:annotates bf:Annotation BIBFRAME

Work,

Instance, or

Authority

oa:hasTarget

*

bf:annotationAssertedB

y

bf:Annotation bf:Authority

Classes

The following table lists Annotation classes in the bf: namespace.

Class Subclass of Subclasses

bf:Annotation oa:Annotation * bf:CoverArt

bf:ContributorBio

bf:Review

bf:PublisherDescription

bf:SampleText

bf:TableOfContents

bf:CoverArt

bf:ContributorBio

bf:Annotation

bf:Review

bf:PublisherDescription

bf:SampleText

bf:TableOfContents

* For "oa:", see Appendix B.

Appendix A: BIBFRAME Annotation Classes Under Consideration Non Normative Appendix

Holdings It has been suggested that BIBFRAME holdings be treated as Annotations.

Holdings will be an important part of BIBFRAME, but the issue of holdings is

complex and is the current subject of intensive discussion. Holdings has therefore

not yet been incorporated into the Annotation model, pending further study of how

it fits into the BIBFRAME model.

ProvenanceProvenance information includes chain of custody (who has owned and controlled

the resource), immediate source of acquisition, place of origin and

derivation. Provenance is under consideration as a BIBFRAME Annotation class,

however it is not clear where the line is drawn between holdings and provenance,

and since holdings is still unsettled, it is thought best to defer treatment of

provenance.

When discussing provenance in the context of Annotations, it is important to

distinguish:

Provenance information about the Annotation. Explains the context in

which the Annotation was created. This may include agents responsible for

creating/generating the Annotation as well as timestamps. Currently there is

one property in the bf: namespace that could be considered a provenance

property - bf:annotationAssertedBy.

Provenance information about the Target. This would be supplied as an

actual Annotation, using a provenance Annotation class hypothetically,

bf:Provenance.

Condition and ActionSimilarly:

bf:Condition -- Characteristics of the physical condition of the resource

bf:Action -- Actions and events that have been taken on the resource

are under consideration as BIBFRAME Annotation classes. However these are

seen to be related to holdings and provenance (respectively) and so their

treatment is deferred, pending further study.

Classification There has been some discussion that a classification (e.g. LCC, DDC) is an

assertion about a resource, and so Classification should be considered as a

potential Annotation class.

For example, institution A's view of a work might list classification 'ABC'.

Institution B might assert that 'XYZ' is also a classification for the work.

Treatment of classification as an Annotation class is for further study.

Appendix B: Relationship to Open Annotation Model Non Normative Appendix

Where appropriate, this model draws on the W3C community drafts, Open

Annotation Model (OAM): Open Annotation Core Data Model dated February 8,

2013l.

OAM NamespaceThe OAM namespace is http://www.w3.org/ns/oa#. The prefix 'oa:' is used to

denote the namespace.

OAM Motivations OAM uses the property oa:motivatedBy, whose range is the class oa:Motivation,

analogous to a BIBFRAME Annotation class. Some of the instances of

oa:Motivation are shown in the following table.

oa:Motivation

instance

Object

oa:bookmarking A bookmark to a point or points within the target resources. For

example, an Annotation that bookmarks the point in a text where the

reader finished reading.

oa:commenting

Defined in OAM as "A comment about or review of the target

resource." oa:Comment should be used for a comment; bf:Review for

a review.

oa:describingA description or review of the target resource (as opposed to a

Comment).

oa:questioning A question about the target resource.

oa:replying A reply to a previous Annotation.

oa:tagging A tag to apply to the target resource.

OAM Example The book "Order And Progress: A Political History Of Brazil" by Ronald M.

Schneider http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2721577-order-and-

progress , has a review:

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/47266/abraham-f-lowenthal/order-

and-progress-a-political-history-of-brazil .

An OAM Annotation to this effect might look like:

<http://example.org/

oaAnnotation1>a oa:Annotation ;

oa:motiva

tedByoa:describing ;

oa:hasBo

dy

<http://www.foreignaffairs.com/

articles/47266/abraham-f-

lowenthal/order-and-progress-a-

political-history-of-brazil> ;

oa:hasTa

rget

<http://www.goodreads.com/book/

show/2721577-order-and-progress>

.

Note that oa:describing is defined as "description or review". There is no distinct

instance for an OAM review. But there is a BIBFRAME class bf:Review.

Therefore, if the first triple above were instead

<http://example.org/annotation1> a bf:Review ;

(and the second triple omitted) then the Annotation would be more specifically

described as a review.

 

AcknowledgementsThis specification builds upon the work from many previous annotation efforts,

including in particular:

Annotation Ontology

Ciccarese, P. Ocana, M. et al. "An open annotation ontology for science on

web 3.0", Journal of Biomedical Semantics 2011 2(Suppl 2):S4, DOI:

10.1186/2041-1480-2-S2-S4, 17 May 2011

Open Annotation Collaboration

Sanderson, R. Van de Sompel, H. "Making Web Annotations Persistent over

Time", Proceedings of the 10th ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital

Libraries, June 2010

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