Re: Holdings - was Re: Some additions to wiki

Richard, I'm grabbing some screen shots of library holdings displays so 
we can look at them together. I'll just pop them onto a web page.

sku is a product code, not a code for an individual item. ISBN is a sku. 
Libraries do add a barcode to items for checkout, and it acts like a 
sku, only it's at an item level. The call number is something else, 
because it can contain location information. ("Fiction") I think the 
examples will make it all more clear.

kc

On 1/14/13 5:50 AM, Richard Wallis wrote:
> Would not 'sku' in http://schema.org/Offer serve this purpose.
>
> I'm thinking of a CreativeWork for the bib stuff, and SomeProducts for the
> manifestation level stuff linked using Offer to a Library - the offer sku
> providing somewhere for [what us library folks call] the call number and
> businessFunction for the types of things you can do with the item in
> question.
>
> ~Richard.
>
> On 14/01/2013 13:23, "Karen Coyle" <kcoyle@kcoyle.net> wrote:
>
>> Richard, I agree that "holdings" is hard to model as a thing. "Name" for
>> the organization is already included, as is location of the
>> organization. So far there is no "location" for the individual product
>> ("call number" in libraries) since other businesses do not provide
>> locations for individual items. In fact, there is very little item-level
>> information so far in schema. Libraries will need that for call number
>> (which is supposed to be unique within the library and to provide a
>> single place for each book -- although this isn't followed 100% in all
>> libraries), and the availability of individual items. So perhaps what we
>> should model is an item level.
>>
>> kc
>>
>> On 1/14/13 2:06 AM, Richard Wallis wrote:
>>> Hi Karen,
>>>
>>> Holdings is a difficult one. I have trouble in justifying, in data
>>> modelling terms, its existence as an an entity. Here is most of an
>>> email, in another thread I am in, on the subject.
>>>
>>>      I still remain to be convinced that a Holding is a thing to be
>>>      modelled as an entity in its own right.
>>>
>>>      Surely the realisation of a holding is just the relationship between
>>>      a thing (Book, Journal, License to access) and a location (Shelf,
>>>      Library, Institution).  Its not a thing or a concept.
>>>
>>>      Schema, which would probably best describe an item the union between
>>>      a CreativeWork and a Product.  The SomeProducts[1] subtype of
>>>      Product has the inventoryLevel property. That's what holdings are, a
>>>      count of the number of items at a location.
>>>
>>>      Trying to model, the phantom echo of performance enabling RDBMS
>>>      denormalization in to a table called Holdings, is definitely a bad
>>>      idea.
>>>
>>>      My couple of cents..
>>>
>>>
>>> I believe that those outside of the library domain have equal difficulty
>>> in understanding too.  I know this might be a radical suggestion as
>>> holdings have been key to water-cooler discussions in libraries for
>>> decades.   However my linked data background has taught me to model the
>>> real things in the real world, and I am yet to meet or pick up a holding.
>>>
>>> ~Richard.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 13/01/2013 15:02, "Karen Coyle" <kcoyle@kcoyle.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I wasn't quite sure where this went, but I added two objects to the
>>>> object-type page [1]:
>>>>
>>>> - the "library" object that is under localBusiness
>>>> - a new "library holdings" type.
>>>>
>>>> In each I put in some text about some new properties that might be needed.
>>>>
>>>> I also have beefed up the commonEndeavor HTML example. [2] If you wrap
>>>> <html> around it is does actually display, although it's not very
>>>> attractive. Just pretend that there's some nice CSS involved that fixes
>>>> that.
>>>>
>>>> kc
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> [1]http://www.w3.org/community/schemabibex/wiki/Object_Types
>>>> [2]http://www.w3.org/community/schemabibex/wiki/CommonEndeavor
>
>
>

-- 
Karen Coyle
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet

Received on Monday, 14 January 2013 14:17:51 UTC