Data model: Source reference

[edit] multilevel sources

Some ideas about multiple source levels. They are a commons problem in my research and I have found no program that can represent them correctly.

an exmple:

• John's birthday: 1875-03-28
  • can be found in the church records of Musterstadt[1]
    • Robert Z. wrote in his book "My family" 1938
      • Marion Z. wrote in her book "Our family" 2004

[edit] Source Inheritance

Sources should be first-class resources, just like an Individual, an Event, a Place, or a Date. For example, here's how you might show that the information in the <#data> graph came from a book:

<#data> gp:source <#book> .
<#book> dc:title  "Title of the Book" .

To specify the page number that the data came from, you might instead do this:

<#data> gp:source <#page> .
<#page>
    gp:page 236 ;
    gp:part <#book> .
<#book> dc:title  "Title of the Book" .

The alternative is to relate the graph to both a page number and a book, like so:

<#data>
    dc:title  "Title of the Book" ;
    gp:page   236 .

This is undesirable because when you are working with a set of graphs obtained from different people, one person may claim that a piece of data came from one source, while another may claim that it came from a different source. The merge of this data can be confusing:

<#data>
    dc:title  "Title of the Book" ;
    dc:title  "Title of a More Different Book" ;
    gp:page   117 ;
    gp:page   236 .

Whereas, with first-class sources, you would get the following, which allows the interpreter to distinguish clearly between sources:

<#data>
    gp:source <#page> ;
    gp:source <#page2> .
<#page>
    gp:page 236 ;
    gp:part <#book> .
<#book>  dc:title  "Title of the Book" .
<#page2>
    gp:page 117 ;
    gp:part <#book2> .
<#book2> dc:title  "Title of a More Different Book" .