Re: Comics and periodicals in schema.org (was Re: journal article for next call?)

Hello,

It is both a question and a comment. Is there a link between the work you
do to describe periodical/serial publications and the standards of the ISSN
about periodical/serial publication description ?

ISSN has models applied to Marc21, to LOD with the Press-oo model (based on
FRBR-oo), and they might be already working on a Schema.org model.
It could be really nice to have the schema.org model for periodical/serial
publications easily interoperable with the ISSN standards as the
periodical/serial publications are already described in the national
library catalogs following those standards, and those catalogs are
published on the web with semantic annotation based on schema.org.

I copy Francois-Xavier from ISSN who has been working on Press-oo ontology (
francois-xavier.pelegrin@issn.org).

Cheers
Jean



2013/12/5 Dan Scott <denials@gmail.com>

> Well, with no feedback after ten hours (heh, I know), and figuring
> that it's better to make things concrete, I've gone ahead and revamped
> the "Periodicals and Comics synthesis" proposal to see what it would
> look like it was fleshed out with PeriodicalVolume and Comic types. In
> the worst case schenario, we can roll back to a previous version of
> the proposal.
>
> In any case, the hierarchies now look like:
>
> Periodical -> PeriodicalVolume -> PeriodicalIssue -> Article
> Comic -> ComicSeries -> ComicIssue -> ComicStory
>
> ... with the Comic types inheriting from the more generic Periodical
> types at each point. Of course, Article can still skip the issue and
> volume layers and point directly at Periodical where appropriate;
> similarly ComicStory can point directly at Comic.
>
> I've changed the structure of the proposal to match that generic /
> specialized approach as well ("Periodical schemata", then "Comic
> schemata"), and beefed up & corrected the examples in a number of
> places to reflect the new types and properties.
>
> Still need to work more on the Comic examples but I think that they
> should fall into place relatively easy.
>
> Overall, I'm feeling much better about the state of this proposal. I
> think we could have lived with what we had before, but it was
> impoverished compared to what is emerging here, and the enhanced TV
> vocabulary really crystallized that for me.
>
> On Wed, Dec 4, 2013 at 1:48 PM, Dan Scott <denials@gmail.com> wrote:
> > A quick update on the synthesized periodical / comics draft proposal
> > [1]; I updated it to use the "hasZzz" pattern Dan Brickley mentioned
> > [2] as a potential future direction for schema.org properties that
> > point at "Zzz" types, rather than using the lower case "zzz" property
> > for the same purpose. For example, we had been using "article" to
> > point at "Article", but in the mean time http://schema.org/article was
> > defined for use in Actions... we can always adjust, of course,
> > depending on which way schema.org swings, but I figured it might as
> > well be consistent.
> >
> > Is it out of the realm of possibility to get yeas / +1s, yeas with
> > caveats, or nays with concrete suggestions / counter-proposals for
> > this aired on the mailing list before our next call on December
> > 11th... hopefully with time to also resolve the caveats / suggestions
> > / counter-proposals prior to the call?
> >
> > I'm almost afraid to mention this, but given the excitement about the
> > increased granularity of the TV-related vocabulary in the schema.org
> > 1.0e release [3] (Series -> Season -> Episode -> Clip), I'm now
> > tempted to go even further than the Periodical -> PeriodicalIssue ->
> > Article level of granularity that we currently offer and interpose a
> > PeriodicalVolume type that would live between Periodical and
> > PeriodicalIssue, and would nicely parallel the existing ComicSeries
> > proposed type. So we would have "Periodical -> PeriodicalVolume ->
> > PeriodicalIssue -> Article" and "Periodical -> ComicSeries ->
> > ComicIssue -> ComicStory" to parallel the TV structure. (Hrm, looking
> > at that perhaps we should add a "Comic" subtype of Periodical to keep
> > everything uniform?)
> >
> > The impact on the current proposal would (roughly) be to change
> > PeriodicalIssue::issueVolume to
> > PeriodicalIssue::partOfPeriodicalVolume and to add a
> > hasPeriodicalVolume property to Periodical; the benefit would be
> > increased granularity for those who desire to express that (for
> > example, you get to provide startDate / endDate for each volume, which
> > seems like a win) while still retaining the ability to support the
> > arxiv.org "we don't need no stinking volumes or issues!" use case.
> >
> > 1.
> http://www.w3.org/community/schemabibex/wiki/Periodicals_and_Comics_synthesis
> > 2. http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-vocabs/2013Dec/0037.html
> > 3. http://blog.schema.org/2013/12/schemaorg-for-tv-and-radio-markup.html
> >
> > On Sun, Dec 1, 2013 at 11:43 PM, Dan Scott <denials@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Peter:
> >>
> >> This is awesome information, thank you!
> >>
> >> I have some questions inline, below:
> >>
> >> On Sat, Nov 30, 2013 at 5:41 PM, Olson, Peter <polson@marvel.com>
> wrote:
> >>> Hi all -
> >>>
> >>> I am always happy to talk about comic semantics.  This probably says
> more about me than it should.
> >>>
> >>> I'll talk a little bit about how we model comics internally - the
> schema.org proposal is a simplification of this (we kind of omit the
> lowest level of the hierarchy in that in order to make it easier for people
> like comics retailers to implement).
> >>
> >> Ah, rereading your email, I think this is crucial to my understanding;
> >> by "omit the lowest level of the hierarchy", do you mean that you
> >> thought about, but did not, create a "ComicStory" type? If that's the
> >> case, then the ComicStory seems analogous to the scholarly Article,
> >> and may very well be worth modelling (even if retailers might not
> >> implement it, I'm sure that comics enthusiasts would jump on it). To
> >> me, at least, it seems that one might want to find a summary of an
> >> obscure story about a favourite character, and from there find out
> >> where you can read that story (e.g. in various issues including
> >> reprints, or in a graphic novel that collects the story amongst
> >> others, or via an online service where access to it can be purchased
> >> directly). On the academic side of periodicals, the Article is in many
> >> ways the driver of most of our use cases, so perhaps I'm biased on
> >> this front.
> >>
> >> Similarly, those obsessive about variant covers may very well want to
> >> track down each of the covers by a given artist, or all of the covers
> >> for a given series. You might be interested in a quick, rough proposal
> >> I made to give cover art more pride of place in schema.org creative
> >> works at
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-schemabibex/2013Nov/0091.html
> >>
> >>> Our model is derived from the comics.org model (and they have done a
> lot of good work in terms of creating workable comic models that capture
> the range of behaviors in comics).
> >>
> >> Thanks for the pointer; it has been fun to explore comics.org a bit!
> >>
> >>> We have a hierarchical model for comics: series collect issues and
> issues collect stories, stories being an indivisible unit of a comic.
> >>
> >> This really interests me, because on the more academic side of
> >> periodicals we're (mostly) working towards periodicals collecting
> >> issues and issues collecting articles (or other creative works, in the
> >> case of photo spreads in magazines like National Geographic or the
> >> like).
> >>
> >>>  The term "story" is a bit overloaded, but can be thought of as
> roughly analogous to an article in a magazine.  It means any indivisible,
> re-printable unit of a comic, including the interior stories, covers,
> backmatter, etc.  For example, most comics have two stories - a cover and
> an interior story.  Many comics, however, have multiple stories - a cover,
> a handful of interior stories, and whatever backmatter.  Amazing Fantasy
> #15 (http://marvel.com/comics/issue/16926/amazing_fantasy_1962_15) is an
> example of this - there were several stories including one about a wizard,
> a Martian invasion and a short throwaway piece about some kid getting
> bitten by a spider.  Anthology books like this are still fairly common -
> A+X is one which is currently published (
> http://marvel.com/comics/series/16450/ax_2012_-_present).
> >>>
> >>> Stories can be (and often are) reprinted in issues and collections
> (e.g. trade paperbacks, hardcovers etc.), so we track creative assignments
> and character appearances at the story level. In our system, collections
> and graphic novels are functionally identical to other comics (a collection
> just has a larger number of collected stories).  We generally track the
> stories in collections and then bubble up the collected issues from the
> stories' original appearance.  For formality we require all comics,
> including collections and graphic novels, to have a series so we assign
> collections to a series of one issue.
> >>
> >> Again, this is very interesting as it parallels a discussion that
> >> we've been having on this list about whether you should call something
> >> a "collection" if it collects only one element; there have been some
> >> fairly strong opinions expressed about this on this list! But it seems
> >> like a practical approach to me :)
> >>
> >>> Let me know if you have more specific questions.   Always happy to
> help.
> >>
> >> Hah, seeing the length of this email, you might regret that statement /
> offer :)
> >>
> >> I was drilling into comics.org a bit, because I'm really interested in
> >> what distinguishes each series for a given comic. So, for example,
> >> http://www.comics.org/series/35015/
> >> http://www.comics.org/series/53696/
> >> http://www.comics.org/series/53702/ are all "The Muppet Show" from
> >> 2009, but listed as three separate series. Is the first one a
> >> four-part series because it is organized around the notion of
> >> "Kermit's Story", and then the next two are single-issue series
> >> because there are self-contained stories?
> >>
> >> Understanding this is important because achieving a synthesized
> >> periodicals & comics proposal that satisfies the academic journal,
> >> popular magazine, newspaper, book series, and comics use cases is
> >> going to hinge on some of these distinctions.
> >>
> >> Part of me wondered if the "series" need might be more generally
> >> served by a "StoryArc" collection type, such that each story could
> >> have a "partOfStoryArc" property (and conversely, StoryArc could have
> >> "containsStory" properties), but for now let's work with the
> >> ComicSeries approach.
> >>
> >> That being said, even at the limited state of understanding that I
> >> currently have attained, I've gone ahead and drafted a proposal that
> >> synthesizes what we've done for periodicals & issues in this group to
> >> date with the comics proposal. The proposal tries to tie in some
> >> patterns of the recently added TV types, too, so it's a tad messy...
> >> but here's what I'm thinking at this point:
> >>
> >> * One big overall change is that we no longer inherit from
> >> "Intangible"; instead, we inherit from CreativeWork (and in some cases
> >> Collection).
> >>
> >> * New types to parallel TVSeries: Periodical and ComicSeries
> >> ** Periodical: add "startDate" and "endDate" standard schema.org
> >> properties instead of minting new "endYear" / "startYear" properties;
> >> we could add "numberOfIssues" and "numberOfVolumes" properties if we
> >> wanted to _really_ parallel TVSeries
> >> ** ComicSeries: inherit from Periodical, include "imprint" and
> >> "volume" properties from Comics proposal (note that range of "imprint"
> >> is now "Organization" to keep it similar to "publisher"; and "volume"
> >> is here because that seems to be of particular importance in the comic
> >> world, while in other domains such as newspapers "The New York Times"
> >> is recognized as the same overall entity no matter what volume it is
> >> as)
> >>
> >> * Changes to Periodical Issue / Issuance:
> >> ** Adopt "PeriodicalIssue" as the standard name
> >> ** Use "pagination" instead of "numberOfPages" to allow more precision
> >> (although, come to think of it, we could offer both properties, to
> >> avoid forcing processors to parse the "pagination" field to figure out
> >> how many pages are in a given issue...)
> >> ** Omit "subtitle" as CreativeWork offers both "alternateName" and
> >> "alternativeHeadline" for similar purposes
> >> ** Use "partOfPeriodical" property to point at Periodical instead of
> "series"
> >> ** Omit "upc" property and move to ComicIssue (aside: maybe
> >> http://schema.org/gtin13 should be reused instead of a new "upc"
> >> property)?
> >>
> >> * Add "ComicStory" as a parallel to "Article". This enables sites that
> >> want to go that deep to use the "partOfComicIssue" /
> >> "partOfComicSeries" properties to link back to those collections - and
> >> the proposed Collection property "isPartOf" would also be available
> >> for use to point at GraphicNovel collections.
> >>
> >> * In "GraphicNovel", rename "collectedIssues" to "comicIssue";
> >> schema.org generally prefers singular property names and this
> >> hopefully makes it clearer for implementers that they should repeat
> >> the "comicIssue" property for each collected issue, rather than
> >> putting them all in a space-delimited list and forcing processors to
> >> figure out what might be meant...
> >>
> >> I've reformatted the comics schemata to try and reflect what we would
> >> need for the final proposal--so for the comics types, I've added
> >> descriptions that paraphrase or directly lift what you (Peter) said in
> >> your email or what the Comics proposal stated elsewhere in the text.
> >> Hope that's okay!
> >>
> >> In passing, I noticed that the descriptive text refers to a
> >> "distributor code" for comic issues, but there is no property defined
> >> for it in ComicIssue the comics proposal; however, one example uses
> >> "productID" which is currently associated with the Product type in
> >> schema.org. Peter, do you know if your group intended to broaden the
> >> domain of "productID" to include ComicIssue?
> >>
> >> The "Comics and Periodical synthesis" proposal is available in its
> >> current state at
> >>
> http://www.w3.org/community/schemabibex/wiki/Periodicals_and_Comics_synthesis
> >> - I think it's reasonably sound in its current form. I started by
> >> copying and pasting the two separate existing proposals in their
> >> current form, and then edited it in stages from there, trying to use
> >> useful wiki changelog comments, so if you want to track the evolution,
> >> it should be pretty straightforward to see what happened.
> >>
> >> Thus far I've made no attempt to weave in the rough "cover art"
> >> proposal, as I'd like that to mature a bit, but I'm sure you can
> >> figure out where it would fit in :)
> >>
> >> I'd love to hear what you think!
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >> Dan
>
>


-- 
Jean Delahousse
JDC
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delahousse.jean@gmail.com - +33 6 01 22 48 55  http://jean-delahousse.net/