This paper describes the crisis of identity facing the World Wide Web and, in particular, the RDF community. It shows how that crisis is rooted in a lack of clarity about the nature of "resources" and how concepts developed during the XML Topic Maps effort can provide a solution that works not only for Topic Maps, but also for RDF and semantic web technologies in general.
"I think we've gotten to the point in these discussions where we have to
define our terms. In the same way that "MARC" means both a structure and
data elements and a content standard, the terms FRBR and RDA are now
taking on multiple meanings."
"Without such a formal domain model, you're just creating 'text', not 'data'. Which is indeed what we used to do, when the text was destined for printed cards or pages. But now we need data."