Re: Scope of this group's work

I would like to echo Adrian's identification of points:
> 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 believe the approach should be from the starting point of ³how/can we use
the full breadth of the Schema.org vocabulary to describe our [broadly
defined] bibliographic resources; what additional elements to the vocabulary
would improve that process and; how would we map information from our
current [mostly record based] data in to schema.org entity based
descriptions.²

A bit of extra background might be drawn from a post of mine
<http://dataliberate.com/2012/11/the-correct-end-of-your-telescope-viewing-s
chema-org-adoption/>

Also as to the point of what the search engines are looking for, this Google
post 
<http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/introducing-knowledge-graph-things
-not.html> gives a clearer view of their entity driven view of the world.

~Richard.

On 15/11/2012 06:49, "Shlomo Sanders" <Shlomo.Sanders@exlibrisgroup.com>
wrote:

> The scope page is missing scenarios.
> If there are no real and prioritize scenarios then how we be sure if 100 mails
> concerning Mickey Mouse is where the time should be spent?
> 
> Search Engines and People that use Search Engines are 2 VERY different types
> of scenarios.
> Search Engines sounds like we understand what the scenarios/objectives but I
> am not sure even that is true.
> 
> Shlomo
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Karen Coyle [mailto:kcoyle@kcoyle.net]
> Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2012 1:41 PM
> 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
> 
> 
>