Re: Scope of this group's work

Jerry,

Note that I talked about authority "data" (and I probably should have 
said "name authority data") not "records." And note that schema.org has 
different graphs for creative works (books, etc.) and for persons, 
although a person can be described as the creator of a work. If you look 
at /Book and at /Person you can see that the description of each entity 
is in its own schema. I believe that this is approximately the same 
"entity" model as

- bibliographic description
- persons
- subjects

which FRBR also echoes. There doesn't seem to be the structure in 
schema.org to further describe a person within a creative work schema. 
So it's not a question of "records" but of entities, and it so happens 
that libraries have authority records for some, but not all, entities.

If we want to model "pseudonym" then we have to decide whether that is 
an attribute of the Person entity, e.g.

Smith, John
   has pseud. Jones, Mary

or if there will be "pseudonymousAuthor" parallel to "author" in /Book, 
or both.

kc

On 11/14/12 10:14 AM, Jerry Persons wrote:
> Karen,
>
> Here's one vote to put it all together in the graph.
>
> It's important that we set aside thinking about "records" of various
> flavors (be they bib, authority, serials, journal articles, journal titles,
> ISNI,
> ORCID, VIAF, ...) and get on with mapping the corpus of information we
> in library-land know about, no matter what record type holds the info
> at this point in history.
>
> Best regards,
> Jerry
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Karen Coyle [mailto:kcoyle@kcoyle.net]
> Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2012 3:41 AM
> To: public-schemabibex@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Scope of this group's work
>
>
>
> On 11/14/12 2:22 AM, Adrian Pohl wrote:
>> As already mentioned in the last mail, here are some questions I am
>> interested in regarding a definition of the scope of this group's
>> work. Most of these questions have already been posed but I think it
>> is important to specify an answer and define the scope a clear as
>> possible on the wiki.
>>
>> - Is this group only about creating a schema.org extension for
>> bibliographic data in a narrower sense, i.e.: descriptions of
>> bibliographic resources plus person data/authority data in general?
>
> Adrian,
>
> As a starting point for discussion, I would separate bibliographic resources
> and authority data into two different options. There are a number of efforts
> (ISNI, ORCID) to identify named agents, of which library authority files are
> one. These are separate data sources from what we usually think of as
> "bibliographic data," and in current data not always linked in an actionable
> way. Similarly, subject authority files are another separate (but
> potentially linkable) source of data that provide additional information
> (broader, narrower, related) that is not carried in the bibliographic record
> itself. (We need to remember that schema.org is mark-up for web pages -- and
> ask: what information is on the page?)
>
> This is why I feel uneasy about including things like "pseudonym" or
> "fictional person" in our work, because that information generally resides
> in the authority data but is not be present in the bibliographic data, and
> not displayed on the bibliographic display web page (today).
> By discussing these distinctions as part of bibliographic data I think that
> we are mixing bibliographic and authority data as if they are one and the
> same, which they are not. It DOES make sense to develop schema.org
> properties for authority data, but our discussion will be less confusing if
> we talk about bibliographic and authority data separately (IMO).
>
>
>> Or is this group's work also about providing information about
>> holdings, offers, availability, price, services, sites etc.? As access
>> in general was already discussed here and seen as a desirable use
>> case, the group probably at least has also to cover the services
>> resources are provided by, their access restrictions, locatio &
>> opening hours (if applicable) etc.
>
> This reflects my question about whether we are talking about bibliographic
> data in general (which would include citations, bibliographies, etc.) or
> specifically LIBRARY bibliographic data. If we are focused on library
> bibliography data then we need to think about how we anticipate that data
> will be used by search engines (which is your next question). WHY do we want
> to surface library data (or bibliographic data in general) to search
> engines?
>
>
> - Another important question
>> regarding scope was already discussed on this list: Which data
>> providers do we have in mind to use this extension? Do we focus on
>> library data or do we want to propose a standard that's useful  for
>> most of the agents that provide bibliographic information on the web
>> (authors, publishers, booksellers, libraries, social cataloging
>> websites, universities etc.)? Although there already seems to be
>> consensus that the extension should not only cover libraries as
>> publishers,  I see that most group members[1] are somehow linked to
>> the library world. Shouldn't we invite more representatives of the
>> different publishers of bibliographic data on the web, then? Have more
>> people from other organizations already been invited?
>
> My understanding is that schema.org grows unevenly based on who shows up to
> request extensions. If you look at the current state of schema.org it is
> very detailed in some areas, and not at all detailed in others. There is
> also some fairly uncontrolled overlap between interested parties.
> This is quite different to how we tend to develop standards in the library
> world.
>
> Between the descriptions for schema.org/Book and the data in the product
> category, I believe that booksellers have already expressed their needs.
> (I don't see a way to track who suggested what sets of properties for the
> original set, unfortunately.) The schema.org wiki [1] shows efforts
> underway.  We are not listed on the proposals page [2] yet, but note that
> there are proposals for scholarly article and for comic books, both of which
> have considerable overlap with general bibliographic concepts.
>
> All this to say that my impression is that schema.org development takes
> place by and for particular communities (booksellers, car sales agents,
> medical services) rather than being organized around "things." Its focus is
> on the surfacing of particular services and offers on the web, not
> describing the world. (This is my interpretation, of course.) The medical
> area [3] is an interesting example that might be closer to libraries than
> the product-oriented ones. It appears to reflect the kinds of medical
> information that exists today in web pages.
>
> We COULD define our target as library web pages, and/or as library catalog
> web displays. It makes sense to me to model our work around web pages rather
> than data in databases. I also think we should consider the display of
> library catalog data separately from library "web pages" -- those pages that
> have information about the library. I'm not saying that we shouldn't also
> consider that data, but, like in the medical example, it may be a different
> set of elements.
>
> kc
>
> [1] http://www.w3.org/wiki/WebSchemas
> [2] http://www.w3.org/wiki/WebSchemas/SchemaDotOrgProposals
> [3] http://schema.org/docs/meddocs.html
>>
>>>  From the foregoing discussion it sounded much like...
>> a) the intended schema.org extension should be useful by for diverse
>> individuals and organizations publishing bibliographic data on the
>> web. b) the term "bibliographic data" is interpreted quite broadly as
>> it not only covers descriptions of bibliographic resources, of authors
>> etc. but also information about where and how an item can be obtained
>> (lend, bought, streamed etc.)  and by whom.
>>
>> I already made a first start defining the scope on the "Scope" page
>> [2]. As said, we should also think about what people to invite to this
>> group that are not from the library world.
>>
>> Adrian
>>
>> [1] http://www.w3.org/community/schemabibex/participants
>>
>> [2] http://www.w3.org/community/schemabibex/wiki/Scope.
>>
>>
>>
>
> --
> Karen Coyle
> kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
> ph: 1-510-540-7596
> m: 1-510-435-8234
> skype: kcoylenet
>
>
>

-- 
Karen Coyle
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet

Received on Wednesday, 14 November 2012 19:38:31 UTC