Specialty

I have been looking a bit at how to describe libraries and people
employed in libraries. Both organizations and people in the real world
can have specialties, but I do not see an appropriate specialty
property available in Schema.org. Or am I missing it?

Currently it appears that only WebPage (and children) have a specialty
property. A http://schema.org/Hospital can have a
http://schema.org/MedicalSpecialty. I think a similar thing holds true
for libraries. An Organization or Person should be able to have a
specialty property with an expected value of
http://schema.org/Specialty. The definition can be similar to the
specialty property of WebPage: "A domain specialty"

For instance, my institution has Design, Natural Resources, and
Veterinary Medicine libraries. An archives could also have areas where
it specializes. It would be nice to be able to state those
specialties. As a user I want to be able to find all libraries in my
state with a particular specialty. As a developer I want to show a map
of all archives and filter by specialty.

This seems close to, but different from, needing to describe a library
as "public," "school," or "university."

Other organizations could also have specialties. An auto repair place
could specialize in foreign cars.

For people I might want to describe a subject specialist. As a user I
want to be able to find a subject specialist who can help me find the
best resources in a particular area.

I think specialties are more general for people as well. I would like
to say that a particular software developer specializes in CSS3, HTML5
video, and semantic markup. This would be similar to how some social
professional networks allow you to list expertise. Having a
Person/specialty could also help job recruiters match employers with
job seekers.

I don't know if any of the standard identification numbers for a
person work for this already, but from their short descriptions it
seems not.

Does something along these lines seem like a proposal which might be
accepted into Schema.org? Is it something this group has an interest
in putting forward?

Jason

Received on Sunday, 27 January 2013 00:07:36 UTC