Re: Works and instances

Hi Karen,

The key points I pick out of your well reasoned email are that there is no
accepted definition of "workness", yet [it] would make sense to many people.

Schema already includes a CreativeWork - it is an issue already being
addressed by the wider community.  If we (the community who have probably
have spent more time, effort, scholarly article pages, and conference
sessions on the topic, than any other) can not help improve the approach, we
will be missing a massive opportunity.

Dare I suggest it would be too easy to over-think this, and put it onto the
'too difficult' pile.

Both Painting & Sculpture are sub-types of CreativeWork.

I agree that schema:manuscript is an omission and is something that should
be discussed further (under the heading of content vs carrier ?).

Back to 'instanceOf' and 'instance', I am not totally happy that they are
the best property names (too much baggage inherited from other disciplines),
but I have failed to come up with anything better.

In my view schema:CreativeWork is aligned with frbr:Work as well as
frbr:Expression, frbr:Manifestation, and probably frbr:Item - they all could
be considered to be CreativeWork descriptions of more or less abstractness.
If my assumption is a working one, an expression could be described (in
Schema terms) as the instanceOf a Work as well as having an instance (the
manifestation).

Sorry for my slightly rambling response - its a bit late in the evening here
;-)

~Richard.





On 06/01/2013 20:08, "Karen Coyle" <kcoyle@kcoyle.net> wrote:

> I have been attempting for a while to respond to the definition of
> properties relating works and instances. The problem may be that I have
> been reading (too much?) about the work concept lately, and so I try to
> cover too much ground.
> 
> (Aside: recommended reading on the library concept of Work: Martha Yee's
> four part series "What is a work?" [1] It is a relatively easy read,
> there are examples, and the first part gives excellent historic background.)
> 
> I will try to simplify with only a few comments:
> 
> 1) "instanceOf" between two schema:creativeWork descriptions would only
> be meaningful under certain conditions (e.g. one describes a work in the
> abstract only), conditions which I consider to be (at this point in
> time) unlikely to occur. Point 2 is one of the reasons for this opinion.
> 
> 2) There is no accepted definition of "workness" even within the LAM
> environment. cf. FRBRoo,[2] ISTC,[3] FaBIO, [4], not to mention BIBFRAME
> [5], all of which differ from each other and from the description on
> this group's wiki. (cf the example on the wiki, of 2 books and a movie,
> is not aligned with FRBR:Work, but would make sense to many people).
> 
> 3) It isn't clear to me whether works will be things (with identifiers),
> post-description clusters (with or without IDs. a la' VIAF), or
> relationships between bibliographic descriptions (e.g. "sameWork"
> between two schema:Book descriptions)
> 
> 4) The term "instance" for a mass-produced product is not helpful. It
> could be applied to "singularities" like works of art, but not for
> products. schema:creativeWork may describe both products and
> singularities, without distinguishing which it is. Most schema:Book
> descriptions will be manufactured products, but note that there is no
> schema:manuscript. (schema:Painting and schema:Sculpture, which should
> describe singularities, appear to be place-holders since they do not
> extend schema:creativeWork.)
> 
> Beyond this, it gets even more complex, and I do not believe that we can
> resolve this at this time. My recommendation is that it is premature to
> introduce this concept into schema.org. There are other relationships,
> in particular the part/whole relationship that Richard also has included
> on the wiki, that are more useful. We should concentrate on those.
> 
> kc
> 
> 
> [1] Linked from http://myee.bol.ucla.edu/workspub.htm
> [2] http://www.cidoc-crm.org/frbr_inro.html
> [3] http://www.istc-international.org/html/
> [4] http://www.essepuntato.it/lode/http:/purl.org/spar/fabio
> [5] http://www.loc.gov/marc/transition/news/bibframe-112312.html

Received on Sunday, 6 January 2013 21:36:22 UTC