Re: Works and instances

At BISG we have struggled with a commonly-accepted definition of work for years and have still not succeeded. I agree with Richard - WAY too difficult because so many constituencies depend on different definitions.

Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 6, 2013, at 4:35 PM, Richard Wallis <richard.wallis@oclc.org> wrote:

> 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 21:47:26 UTC