RE: schema.org and ONIX... AND THEMA

Hi, Ivan--

This was actually going to be one of my recommendations as a result of the interviewing I've been doing. That this "super simple schema.org" subset would be useful is clear. What I do want to point out, though, is that I think Thema rather than ONIX would be the better choice. Thema is about subject classifications (plus it is a global standard) and that is the kind of metadata publishers need to embed at a granular level in their content. ONIX is really a messaging format that contains a huge amount of stuff that would not be used in that way at all--it is product level metadata primarily. So whether it might make sense to look at portions of ONIX, I think Thema is the place to start, and I think it would find very quick adoption.

First of all, apologies for the delayed response. I am head-down on a big report for the EU that I have to finish by tomorrow, and I have been neglecting non-critical e-mails (and cancelling meetings!). I see that there are a whole bunch of replies to this that I have not yet looked at. But I wanted to go on record for saying that this was exactly what I was thinking would be called for (whether ONIX or Thema).

-----Original Message-----
From: Ivan Herman [mailto:ivan@w3.org] 
Sent: Monday, April 07, 2014 11:23 PM
To: Bill Kasdorf
Cc: W3C Digital Publishing IG
Subject: schema.org and ONIX...

Bill,

I am currently at a Linked Data Workshop at a conference in Seoul, which had a keynote from R. Guha, who is, in some sense, the "father" of schema.org. Listening to him (combining also with my past experience), and also referring to the note I sent around earlier this morning[1] I am more and more serious in thinking that a stripped-down version of ONIX defined in schema.org might be a great idea. Of course, we have to see whether there is a business interest and business case for this: is there a use case for publishers as well as for search engines? But if the answer is yes on both, than this may be an important thing to do.

I do know Guha personally relatively well, as well as Dan Brickley, who is the other person running schema.org's vocabulary development. I would be happy to make the links and go into the discussions but, of course, the question is whether publishers, as well as institutions like Bowker, would be interested by something like that. I think that clarifying this, ie, set up the use cases, would be perfectly in line with the IG's charter (although we probably would have to spawn a different group to make the specification itself, but that is all right.)

What do you think?

Ivan

[1] http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/international/london-book-fair/article/61722-london-book-fair-2014-publishers-and-internet-standards.html

----
Ivan Herman, W3C 
Digital Publishing Activity Lead
Home: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
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Received on Tuesday, 8 April 2014 15:09:31 UTC