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Document Service Ontology (DSO)

Jakob Voß (VZG)

2013-08-08 12:01:34 +0200 (version 0.5)

Table of Contents

1 Introduction

The Document Service Ontology (DSO) is a micro-ontology that defines a set of typical document-related services such as provided by libraries, museums and archives.

1.1 Status of this document

This HTML document and RDF serializations of the Document Service Ontology (dso.ttl in RDF/Turtle and ssss.owl in RDF/XML) are generated automatically from a source file written in Pandoc Markdown syntax.1 Sources and updates are available at http://github.com/gbv/dso.

This is version 0.5, last modified at 2013-08-08 12:01:34 +0200 with revision cf40f2e.

The current version of this ontology is a preliminary draft for open discussion. Feedback is welcome!

Revision history

1.2 Terminology

The keywords “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.

1.3 Namespaces and ontology

The URI namespace of this ontology is . The namespace prefix dso is recommeded. The URI of this ontology as a whole is http://purl.org/ontology/dso.

@prefix dso: <http://purl.org/ontology/dso#> .
@base        <http://purl.org/ontology/dso> .

The following namspace prefixes are used to refer to related ontologies:

@prefix bibo:  <http://purl.org/ontology/bibo/> .
@prefix foaf:  <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/> .
@prefix owl:   <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#> .
@prefix rdfs:  <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .
@prefix ssso:  <http://purl.org/ontology/ssso#> .
@prefix vann:  <http://purl.org/vocab/vann/> .

The Document Service Ontology (DSO) is defined in RDF/Turtle as following:

<> a owl:Ontology ;
    rdfs:label "Document Service Ontology" ;
    rdfs:label "DSO" ;
    vann:preferredNamespacePrefix "dso" .

2 Overview

The following diagram illustrates the classes and properties defined in this ontology.

    +---------------------+
    |  dso:ServiceEvent   |
    | +-----------------+ |  hasDocument    +-----------------------+
    | | DocumentService |------------------>| ...any document class |
    | |                 |<------------------|                       |
    | |  Loan           | |  hasService     +-----------------------+
    | |  Presentation   | |
    | |  Interloan      | |
    | |  OpenAccess     | |
    | |  Digitization   | |
    | |  Identification | |
    | |  ...            | |
    | +-----------------+ |
    +---------------------+

This ontology does not make any assumptions about types of documents. A document may be an abstract entity (e.g. a work or an edition of a book), a physical or digital copy, or a unique object (e.g. a statue in a museum). Some service types, however do only make sense with specific types of documents.

3 Classes

3.1 DocumentService

A document service is a kind of service event (ssso:ServiceEvent) that is somehow related to one or more documents.

dso:DocumentService a owl:Class ;
    rdfs:label "DocumentService" ;
    rdfs:subClassOf ssso:ServiceEvent ;
    rdfs:isDefinedBy <> .

3.2 Loan

A loan is a DocumentService event that involes the temporary transfer of usage rights of a document from a service provider (e.g. a library) to a service consumer (e.g. a library patron).

dso:Loan a owl:Class ;
    rdfs:label "Loan" ;
    rdfs:subClassOf dso:DocumentService ;
    rdfs:isDefinedBy <> .

3.3 Presentation

A presentation involves the display or similar usage of a document in a restricted environment, e.g. within the rooms or in the intranet of a library or museum.

dso:Presentation a owl:Class ;
    rdfs:label "Presentation" ;
    rdfs:subClassOf dso:DocumentService ;
    rdfs:isDefinedBy <> .

3.4 Interloan

For interloan a document is made accessible mediated by another institution.

dso:Interloan a owl:Class ;
    rdfs:label "Interloan" ;
    rdfs:subClassOf dso:DocumentService ;
    rdfs:isDefinedBy <> .

3.5 OpenAccess

An Open Access service implies to free accessibility of a document without any restrictions by the service provider (Open Access or free copies).

dso:OpenAccess a owl:Class ;
    rdfs:label "OpenAccess" ;
    rdfs:subClassOf dso:DocumentService ;
    rdfs:isDefinedBy <> .

3.6 Digitization

A digitization DocumentService creates a digital document from a physical document, for instance a digital photograph or a 3D-scan of a physical object.

This class is just a suggestion!

3.7 Identification

A service to identify a document that is only known with limited properties (e.g. only parts of the title). In RDF such document is typically expressed by a blank node.

This class is experimental!

4 Properties

4.1 hasDocument

Relates a DocumentService to a document. The relation is rather lax as it only tells that a specific document is somehow involved in a specific document service event. To express more reliable relations, one should define and use more specific sub-properties, such as daia:availableFor and daia:unavailableFor.

dso:hasDocument a owl:ObjectProperty ;
    rdfs:label "hasDocument" ;
    rdfs:domain dso:DocumentService ;
    owl:inverseOf dso:hasService ;
    rdfs:isDefinedBy <> .

4.2 hasService

Relates a document to a DocumentService.

dso:hasService a owl:ObjectProperty ;
    rdfs:label "hasService" ;
    rdfs:range dso:DocumentService ;
    owl:inverseOf dso:hasDocument ;
    rdfs:isDefinedBy <> .

6 References

6.1 Normative References

6.2 Informative References

  1. Documents are generated using makespec.↩