Re: Itemprop for person

We at Ex Libris always find it better to start with use cases that demonstrate real value to users as opposed to starting with the solution. Being able to describe real vs. fictional people is great, but will the effort pay off as compared to other areas that need to be invested in?

I am not a Librarian so perhaps should not and cannot say.
But, please keep this in mind.

Thanks,
Shlomo

Sent from my iPad

On Nov 14, 2012, at 3:07, "Karen Coyle" <kcoyle@kcoyle.net> wrote:

> Owen - I share your dis-ease although I might word my concern as more like: "better for what?" (which I think is what you're getting at here). I'm still not clear what our goal is here -- bibliographic data in general? Library catalog data specifically? With the caveat that the broader our target the less specific our data can be because there will be less coherency in available data elements, coding, and values.
> 
> I think we need to focus on the use cases -- some of them are not (yet) really use cases, and others seem to be more like best practices. Any concept of "better" has to be subjectible (? real word?) to some kind of measurement of what you are trying to do.
> 
> kc
> 
> On 11/13/12 4:13 PM, Owen Stephens wrote:
>> On 12 Nov 2012, at 16:31, Richard Wallis <richard.wallis@oclc.org
>> <mailto:richard.wallis@oclc.org>> wrote:
>> 
>>> Re: Itemprop for person
>>> I think that 'better description', which should lead to better
>>> discovery, is the key to much of what we are about in this group.
>> 
>> I'm going to challenge this once, but if the consensus of the group is
>> against me, I'll try to shut up!
>> 
>> I don't agree it is enough to just aim for 'better description', because
>> I don't think it tells us enough about what we should do as a priority -
>> there are so many things we could describe, and we know from many years
>> of experience in libraries that much of the effort that goes into
>> description is not actually used.
>> 
>> To try to give an example. In the question of describing
>> people/organisations as fictional - what are the likely questions this
>> might help answer? I can pose two scenarios that might be helped:
>> 
>> I want to find fictional writing about detectives
>> I want to find non-fiction writing about fictional detectives
>> 
>> However, I would suggest that only the second is really supported by the
>> ability to label a person as 'fictional'. The first is much better
>> served (IMO) by labelling a creativework as fiction (which I guess could
>> already be done via the genre property). This latter approach also avoid
>> having to deal with the trickier issues of fictional representations of
>> real people (who knew that W.A. Mozart also did detective work?
>> http://www.wakefieldlibrary.org/lists/zrarealdetectives.htm)
>> 
>> Anyway - my point is really to argue one of these is more valid than the
>> other - both are valid scenarios but I contend they are supported by
>> different kinds of 'better description'. This is why I think it is
>> important that we try to explore the purpose of extending schema.org
>> <http://schema.org> beyond 'better description' if we are going to
>> prioritise and come up with focused proposals for extensions that are
>> likely to see take up.
>> 
>> I'd be interested in others thoughts, and as I say, I'm happy to leave
>> it here having put in my 2pennies
>> 
>> Owen
> 
> -- 
> 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 13:14:14 UTC