We are creating identities for statutes in the GeoKB to serve as linkable reference points for USGS Programs that operate under the legislative authorities established in the U.S. Code. We use the summarized source from the USGS web site as our starting point and source for instantiating items that we can link to.
Conventions
- Use a plain language title for the statute such as Wilderness Act of 1964 as the label. This may or may not be found as a "short title" in the official record for the legislation.
- Include the citation to the U.S. Code or other official identification as an alias (e.g., 16 U.S.C. 1131 and 1133); this aids in finding and identifying the linked entity
- Point to the item specifying the USGS BPI source as the knowledge source for the instance of classification
- Establish external ID connections to GovInfo.gov sources for the statutes (While there are many sources for U.S. Code citations/documents and Public Law records, the GovInfo source provides a .gov foundation that includes an API and a set of resolvable identifiers that seems reasonable for us to use vs. other sources from commercial, academic, and nonprofit organizations.)
- Set a start time date when the legislation was signed into law where available
- Establish same as linkages wherever available to Wikidata items; or if unsure about the semantics of an item in Wikidata, use the see also property (By establishing these linkages we provide an entry point to further information we build by linking to the statutes authorizing the USGS to operate. This is important as we want AI and humans using the Global Knowledge Commons to be able to connect dots from legal authority to the research and scientific operations we conduct and the products we produce in the USGS.)
- Add USGS context section to item discussion page using text from the USGS summarization of its authorizing legislation; this can be augmented over time to help provide notes about specific aspects of the legislation that impact the USGS