Re: Works and instances

Karen,

I have much sympathy with your thoughts on the loose hooking together of
CreativeWorks with similar content ­ especially recognising that the
similarity is in the mind of those doing the hooking.  versionOf could be a
good replacement for instanceOf here.

Being immersed in the graph based world of linked data, I try to avoid (not
always with much success ;-) the use of structured hierarchical terms such
as vertical & horizontal, as they tend to precondition thinking.  versionOf
again may be useful here.

Having said all that, you only have to listen in on general conversation
between your colleagues, friends and relatives to realise that we all have
an implicit understanding of the concept of a creative work and [what us
frbr exposed folks would label] expressions and manifestations of that work
(without using those labels).

I contend that the majority of people start their journeys in the search
engines at that work level before drilling in to find what they are looking
for in terms of format, availability, etc. By not linking/identifying our
bibliographic resources at that level we are failing to get those resources
under the noses of the people looking for them.    To that end, I believe it
is worth striving towards providing the metadata capability to describe that
relationship, if the [data] publisher is aware of it.

~Richard.


On 06/01/2013 22:53, "Karen Coyle" <kcoyle@kcoyle.net> wrote:

> Richard, I would be more comfortable with a relationship property that
> did not presume a hierarchy - that is, did not presume that one
> description is subordinate ("instance of") another. My gut feeling is
> that we will have many descriptions at various levels of detail, but
> that there is no universal ordering that resembles WEMI.  Still, people
> will want to say that *this* is similar to/another version of *that*. So
> we'll have lots of citations of Tom Sawyer, most of which will include
> publisher information, and people will want to hook them together. And
> we might have movies and ebooks and audio books and various other things
> that also have similar content. That "hooking together" constitutes a
> Work in the minds of the "hookers" (:-)). But there may be no "Work"
> description in the FRBR sense to point to. So I would prefer a
> horizontal relationship property to a vertical one. Or, in fact, I would
> prefer a property that allows people to make the relationship without
> having to think any more about the relationship than "these are kind of
> the same content."
> 
> And, no, I don't know what to call it. "versionOf" comes to mind, but is
> not entirely satisfactory.
> 
> kc
> 
> On 1/6/13 1:35 PM, Richard Wallis 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
>> >
>> >
>> >
> 
> --
> Karen Coyle
> kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
> ph: 1-510-540-7596
> m: 1-510-435-8234
> skype: kcoylenet
> 
>