Re: Holdings-as-Offer: wrap-up

On 10/19/13 12:07 PM, Dan Scott wrote:

>
> I am worried about this distinction you're introducing between branch
> and library. To me, a branch is a library. The seller represents the
> current physical location of the item (if that item is physical) where
> an interested party can pick it up.

Unfortunately, schema does not make that clear, and I can't find any 
examples with seller. It takes Organization or Person as a value. 
"Reference" is not an organization, and I'm not sure about "South 
Branch" - whether I would call that an Organization in the schema.org 
type sense. Plus, as I said in my previous note, a location like "MAIN" 
doesn't tell you what library it refers to. It seems that we have to get 
the library name (or identifier, or web page) in there somewhere.

The way Organization is defined, it seems it would be the name of the 
company or institution, not the location of a store within the brand, or 
a branch:

"An organization such as a school, NGO, corporation, club, etc."

Then there's "Local business" which seems to embody a combination of 
organization and location. (Of which Library is a sub-type.)

Really, it's hard to know. Maybe someone here knows of examples of how 
seller is used? If I go to most web sites the "seller" is probably the 
company/web site, not my local store. But that's because in that case 
the item is available online through that very web site. In the case of 
libraries, we are sending people to a physical location for non-online 
items. So "seller" and "location" could be different. And location may 
not be an organization, in the schema.org sense.


  I think search engines are trying to
> satisfy an immediate need, not saying "oh it's available in NYPL somewhere".


You would also have the "availableFrom.." that tells you where it is. 
But again, if "availableF..." says "MAIN" you haven't told the person 
which of the thousands of libraries referred to as MAIN it is. So you 
need the library, organization, or institution to clear that up. And 
that isn't usually included in the holdings statement of libraries 
(except WorldCat, and WorldCat *only* has the institution/organization 
name, not the location of the item itself). **AAaaarggghhh**

kc


>
> On Oct 19, 2013 2:24 PM, "Karen Coyle" <kcoyle@kcoyle.net
> <mailto:kcoyle@kcoyle.net>> wrote:
>
>     Dan, I'm obviously having trouble explaining my point. Here's what I
>     would add to the example:
>
>
>
>            <div itemprop="offers" itemscope
>         itemtype="http://schema.org/__Offer <http://schema.org/Offer>">
>               <meta itemprop="businessFunction"
>         content="http://purl.org/__goodrelations/v1#LeaseOut
>         <http://purl.org/goodrelations/v1#LeaseOut>">
>               <meta itemprop="seller" content="Example Branch 1</meta>
>               <div>Call number: <span
>         itemprop="inventoryIdentifier"__>876.54</span></div>
>               <div>Location: <span
>         itemprop="availableAtOrFrom">__Reference</span></div>
>               <div>Item status: <span>
>                   <link itemprop="availability"
>         href="http://schema.org/__InStoreOnly
>         <http://schema.org/InStoreOnly>">
>                   Library use only
>               </span></div>
>            </div>
>
>
>
>       <div itemprop="offers" itemscope
>     itemtype="http://schema.org/__Offer <http://schema.org/Offer>">
>          <meta itemprop="businessFunction"
>     content="http://purl.org/__goodrelations/v1#LeaseOut
>     <http://purl.org/goodrelations/v1#LeaseOut>">
>          <meta itemprop="seller" content="http://sfpl.org"></__meta>
>          <div>Call number: <span
>     itemprop="inventoryIdentifier"__>876.54</span></div>
>          <div>Location: <span
>     itemprop="availableAtOrFrom">__Reference</span></div>
>          <div>Item status: <span>
>              <link itemprop="availability"
>     href="http://schema.org/__InStoreOnly <http://schema.org/InStoreOnly>">
>              Library use only
>          </span></div>
>       </div>
>
>     "Seller" becomes the library, not the location within the library,
>     and not even the branch.
>
>     I see a useful interplay between "seller" and "availableAtOrFrom".
>     If we add "availableAtOrFrom" (which I don't see on the examples on
>     the web page for the proposal, but it makes good sense here), then
>     we have "availableAtOrFrom" for the displayed physical location,
>     whatever it is. Seller then becomes something that identifies the
>     library qua organization, and should be an organization, not a
>     location (like "Reference" or even "West branch"). Seller and
>     availableAtOrFrom might be the same, but that's not a problem. For
>     most displays, though, I think that they would be different, since
>     the holdings display doesn't usually contain the library name:
>
>     (site is Berkeley Public Library Catalog)
>     Location        Call no.        Status
>     CENTRAL LIB     876.54          Check shelf
>
>     Imagine how many libraries have a location called "MAIN" or
>     "CENTRAL" -- that's a location, not an organization. So you need to
>     get the library organization name in there.
>
>       <div itemprop="offers" itemscope
>     itemtype="http://schema.org/__Offer <http://schema.org/Offer>">
>          <meta itemprop="businessFunction"
>     content="http://purl.org/__goodrelations/v1#LeaseOut
>     <http://purl.org/goodrelations/v1#LeaseOut>">
>          <meta itemprop="seller" content="Berkeley Public Library"></meta>
>        <!-- or ... content="http://__berkeleypubliclibrary.org
>     <http://berkeleypubliclibrary.org>"  -->
>          <div>Call number: <span
>     itemprop="inventoryIdentifier"__>876.54</span></div>
>          <div>Location: <span itemprop="availableAtOrFrom">__CENTRAL
>     LIB</span></div>
>          <div>Item status: <span>
>              <link itemprop="availability"
>     href="http://schema.org/__inStock <http://schema.org/inStock>">
>              Check shelf
>          </span></div>
>       </div>
>
>     Does that make sense?
>
>     kc
>
>
>
>         I can include an example to cover this use case.
>
>             Another case is for electronic
>             materials. Library systems handle this differently, but
>             there isn't a
>             location in many cases:
>
>             Online    Click here
>
>
>         Good question! What we do in Evergreen currently is essentially:
>
>         <li property="offers" vocab="http://schema.org/" typeof="Offer">
>             <a href="URL_FOR_ELECTRONIC___MATERIAL">Available online</a>
>             <link property="availability"
>         href="http://schema.org/__OnlineOnly
>         <http://schema.org/OnlineOnly>" />
>             ...
>         </li>
>
>         Glancing at this, I think I need to add in a property="url" to
>         the <a>
>         link there. And it certainly can have a <meta> tag for the "seller"
>         property as well. I can include some documentation and an
>         example for
>         this use case, too.
>
>             I'm thinking that there are cases in which the library
>             itself is not
>             included in the holdings statement (or anywhere else on the
>             page) because it
>             is inherent in the context of the system being searched. So
>             my question is
>             whether there is value in including information about the
>             library itself as
>             a super-location to the holdings location, or is the
>             assumption that this
>             connection will be made through, e.g., the URL of the web
>             page that has the
>             markup?
>
>
>         I think there is significant value to creating 1) a page per library
>         for a given system that contains the physical addresses / hours
>         / etc,
>         even for single-library systems and 2) linking to that page
>         (explicitly, or implicitly via <meta>) from each of the associated
>         offers. It will enable the search engines to follow their nose based
>         on our assertions, rather than having to make assumptions about how
>         many libraries may inherently be represented by
>         library.example.com <http://library.example.com>.
>
>             I think my question leads to a broader one about the use
>             case for library
>             data in schema.org <http://schema.org>. When I look at
>             product examples it is clear to me that
>             the target is the URL of the product page. Is this also the
>             assumption for
>             library data in schema.org <http://schema.org> -- that we
>             are expecting a search engine
>             retrieval of a page for a library resource, and that page is
>             the target of
>             the search? If so, then that URL is all that is needed to
>             link to the
>             library and its resource. If, however, we anticipate other
>             uses to be made
>             of the schema mark-up, such as organizing retrieved items by
>             geographical
>             location, then we need to get that information into each web
>             page. This may
>             be unrelated to the markup of holdings, but it was this
>             proposal that
>             brought it to mind.
>
>
>         Good question again. I see the primary use case being the search
>         engines ingesting a sitemap, crawling all of the listed pages, and
>         sorting out the items and linked offers accordingly.
>
>         In the case of our library catalogue, I created a sitemap that lists
>         each of the record detail pages, which expose metadata & holdings.
>         Unfortunately, when I generated the sitemap last year, it was
>         before I
>         had implemented holdings-as-offers; now that all of the attached
>         offers will be part of each record details page, I think a new crawl
>         of those pages could provoke much more interesting results.
>
>
>     --
>     Karen Coyle
>     kcoyle@kcoyle.net <mailto:kcoyle@kcoyle.net> http://kcoyle.net
>     m: 1-510-435-8234 <tel:1-510-435-8234>
>     skype: kcoylenet
>

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

Received on Saturday, 19 October 2013 20:02:47 UTC