Re: [topicmaps-comment] Topic maps 'float above' resources?

[Lars Marius Garshol <larsga@garshol.priv.no>]

* Jon Jermey Webindexing Glenda Browne
| 
| One advantage of topic maps is said to be that they are not
| connected to the resources they describe (as, say, subject metadata
| tags are).

I would put this differently. Topic maps *are* connected to the
resources they describe (using links, as you correctly point out), but
in contrast with, say metadata tags, they live outside the resources.
This is really the key point: you don't need to change your documents
in order to describe them with topic maps.

| However, it seems to me that for the topic map to be useful as a
| means of accessing resources it must have links, and that these
| links might require a fair bit of work and analysis to set up. 

This is true. In many cases the occurrence relationships can be set up
automatically, depending on what kind of source data you have, but not
always. Interestingly, you may not always need very structured source
data to do this; it may be enough to know that all the files in a
given directory are project member biographies, for example.

| And then the link must be made explicit, eg by adding the URL as an
| occurrence. As soon as this is done, surely the topic map is
| connected to the resources it describes

Absolutely.

--Lars M.