Re: WorldCat Works Data

Yes, defining what a ³work² is has proven next to impossible in the
commercial world. That was one of 2 things that killed the ISTC in the US ­
nobody could agree on what it was supposed to define. (The other, larger,
kill factor was the problem of linking together competing editions ­ two
major publishers flat-out refused to do it.) So it would be helpful to know
what constitutes a ³work² in this instance.

From:  Tom Morris <tfmorris@gmail.com>
Date:  Tuesday, February 25, 2014 at 10:07 AM
To:  "Wallis,Richard" <Richard.Wallis@oclc.org>
Cc:  "public-schemabibex@w3.org" <public-schemabibex@w3.org>
Subject:  Re: WorldCat Works Data
Resent-From:  <public-schemabibex@w3.org>
Resent-Date:  Tue, 25 Feb 2014 15:07:38 +0000

Very cool.  I don't see anything that describes the criteria for "workness."
Are editions in multiple languages (ie translations) considered the same
work?  Different formats such as audiobooks?  How are multi-volume works
handled?

Can you say more about how the stable identifiers will be managed?  It seems
like there's an inherent conflict between improving the quality (ie
changing) and maintaining stability.  Clearly two works that get merged
could just be a redirect, but what about when a work gets split into two?

Is there a bulk download available or do we just have to work our way from
    http://experiment.worldcat.org/entity/work/data/1.nt
to
    http://experiment.worldcat.org/entity/work/data/195000000.nt
one at a time?

Where should bugs be reported?  There appears to be something funky with the
way non-existent IDs are handled.  If you fetch
http://experiment.worldcat.org/entity/work/data/195000000.nt then
http://experiment.worldcat.org/entity/work/data/196000000.nt you end up
receiving the same data again.

Tom



On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 9:05 AM, Wallis,Richard <Richard.Wallis@oclc.org>
wrote:
> Hi all, 
> 
> I would just like to share my pleasure at being able to stop hinting that
> "OCLC were doing something about bibliographic descriptions at the work
> level".
> 
> I have just announced a preview release of some 194 million open bibliographic
> work descriptions from WorldCat.org <http://WorldCat.org> .
> 
> Of course extensive use is made of Schema.org <http://Schema.org>  and
> SchemaBibEx proposals ;-)
> 
> It is a preview release as it is intended to increase the quality of data,
> linking and mark up over the near future.
> 
> I have posted a blog with more detail:
> http://dataliberate.com/2014/02/oclc-preview-194-million-open-bibliographic-wo
> rk-descriptions/
> 
> Regards,
>      Richard
>