Renear and Dubin, Three of the Four FRBR Group 1 Entity Types are Roles, not Types
Allen Renear and David Dubin are proposing a paper for the 2007 ASIST conference in October. (Or perhaps it’s been accepted. I’m not sure.) The abstract for Three of the Four FRBR Group 1 Entity Types are Roles, not Types says:
We examine the conceptual model of the “bibliographic universe” presented in IFLA’s Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) and argue, applying the ontology design recommendations developed by N. Guarino and C. Welty, that three of the four Group 1 entity types should be considered roles (relationships) rather than types. We then show how this analysis generalizes the solution to a previously identified puzzle in entity type assignment and is supported by John Searle’s notion of a cascade of social facts established through collective intentionality — which we take to be confirmation that this re-factoring results in a more accurate picture of the bibliographic domain. Finally we make some suggestions as to why it seemed that these entities were types rather than roles and note that in specific applications there may in fact be good practical reasons for models that treat types as roles.
Sounds very interesting! I hope it gets posted online, and perhaps someone will blog the conference session. You’ll recall Allen Renear from the paper he wrote with Yunseon Choi, Modeling Our Understanding, Understanding Our Models.