Which properties to expose Was: Extension syntax Was: Re: Updated Example

I believe we [again] have diverged enough from the initial thread to warrant
a fork ;-)

On 25/02/2013 18:04, "Karen Coyle" <kcoyle@kcoyle.net> wrote:

> I think it's not just being open about values -- I think this will also
> inform what properties we define.
> Extent is a good example -- if we
> define only more specific properties ("duration" "number of pages") then
> those undefined extent statements won't fit in any of the available
> properties, and it makes even less sense to plot them into a random one.
> So we need to think about what data people have and provide properties
> for it, not just develop the properties that some think are "good" and
> let people succeed or fail. I really recommend looking at "read data" to
> inform our work.
> 
> kc

You raise a useful point here.

If we decide to recommend 'extent' as a property, would it's content be
useful to / relevant to / understandable by a structured [Microdata or RDFa]
data consumer?  I'm not particularly picking on 'extent', this is a question
we should be asking ourselves about any proposed property.

It would be easy to fall into the trap of considering that anything felt
worthy enough to be entered into a Marc record should be reproduced in a
Schema.org property on some Type or other.

Our role is not to attempt to remake Schema in Marc's/ONIX's image.  It is
to use Schema [with hopefully as little extension as possible] to usefully
represent resources from the bibliographic domain.

I think the word useful is important.

In the case of 'extent', I am not sure what a consumer (such as Google)
would do differently if it found it's content in a general property such as
'description' instead of a specific 'extent' property.  As you say yourself,
you would have to produce a parsing algorithm to make any [beyond human
readable] sense of it.  As a data point, I can not see them, or anyone else
making any use of it.

Mapping from a detailed data format, such as Marc or ONIX, to a generic
vocabulary such as Schema is by definition lossy.  As a community we need to
accept that, whilst giving good justification (by our proposals) as to why
it is [currently] too lossy.
  
~Richard.

--  
Richard Wallis
Technology Evangelist
OCLC

Received on Monday, 25 February 2013 17:48:09 UTC