ABSTRACT
The article discusses the future of universal bibliographic control in the context of the Semantic Web. Resource Description Framework RDF), the basis of the Semantic Web, allows the replacement of attempts at one-size-fits-all schema, rules and other international/global standards with what might be termed an all-sizes-fit-one approach, as shown by the example of VIAF (Virtual International Authority File). This approach can support a much richer ecology of bibliographic communities and their standards, achieved by establishing the semantic mapping of individual properties, and sets of properties (or RDF graphs), to form a connected web into which legacy metadata and newly-minted statements can be deposited. Such deposits are made at the natural level of the source standard, preserving local granularity, semantic focus, context, and the data itself, using one-to-one RDF representations of the standard. The web of semantic links then allows this data to be readily assimilated into a universal, web-scale environment which connects all bibliographic metadata as “library linked data”. The article is illustrated with examples drawn from IFLA standards such as FRBR and ISBD, and other international standards such as Dublin Core and RDA.
