Re: Question about isbn and other standardized numbering schemes

Hi Jacob,

I will answer question 2. first.  All properties in the Schema.org
vocabulary are optional an optionally repeatable.

isbn, is a well recognised property for books, especially in a commercial
environment, and hence has been part of the vocabulary from the beginning
and well before a bibliographic focus has been  applied to its enhancement.

The topic of generic identifier patterns were discussed
<https://www.w3.org/community/schemabibex/wiki/Identifier> in the Schema
Bib Extend W3C Community Group <https://www.w3.org/community/schemabibex/>,
which has ben responsible for many bibliographic enhancement/extension
proposals for schema.org, and more recently the bib.schema.org extension
<http://bib.schema.org>.  After discussion the approach was not recommended.

In practice LCC, Dewey number, and other identifiers are handled by
referencing the subject, author, classification entity they identify, and
are therefore not direct properties of the CreativeWork [Book] being
described. The about property is usually used to relate the CreativeWork to
these.  Checkout the 'Linked Data' tab on this page
<http://www.worldcat.org/title/zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance-an-inquiry-into-values/oclc/673595&referer=brief_results>,
and any other result, from OCLC's WorldCat for an example of this.

You may find OCLC's work, publishing [using schema.org] 300+ Million
bibliographic resource descriptions linked to related work descriptions in
this are helpful in your analysis.

~Richard.




Richard Wallis
Founder, Data Liberate
http://dataliberate.com
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/richardwallis
Twitter: @rjw

On 8 October 2015 at 18:29, Jacob Jett <jjett2@illinois.edu> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I'm a researcher examining the plausibility of walking library MARC format
> metadata into the schema.org ontology. I see that one of the properties
> of schema:Book is schema:isbn. I had two questions.
>
> 1) Is there a generic property that allows me to assert additional
> identifiers, such as classification numbers (e.g. LCC number)?
>
> 2) Is the model's expectation that all books have ISBNs? Because that
> simply isn't true. At best ISBN is a contingent property of books (some
> have them and some do not, especially as you track back in time). Does this
> mean that schema:isbn is an optional property for schema:Book(s)? Doesn't
> it make more sense to just have a more generalized property that works with
> any standardized numbering scheme?
>
> For example
>
> schema:Book schema-ex:identifier schema-ex:Identifier .
>
> schema-ex:Identifier schema-ex:identifierType schema-ex:IdentifierStandard
> .
>
> And then have a similar set of properties for standardized classification
> schemes.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jacob
>
> _____________________________________________________
> Jacob Jett
> Research Assistant
> Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship
> The Graduate School of Library and Information Science
> University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
> 501 E. Daniel Street, MC-493, Champaign, IL 61820-6211 USA
> (217) 244-2164
> jjett2@illinois.edu
>
>