Re: BookFormatTypes

On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 4:41 AM, Owen Stephens <owen@ostephens.com> wrote:

> > On 21 Apr 2015, at 23:15, Wallis,Richard <Richard.Wallis@oclc.org>
> wrote:
>
<snip>


> > , PrintBook, not seeing any property needs that that would warrant a
> specific type.
>
> PrintBook - The most obvious property that a print book has that
> audiobooks and ebooks don’t is number of pages. Schema.org smushed
> numberOfPages into ‘Book’ which works only if you assume ‘print’ is the
> default medium for a book. We can’t directly fix this in the extension but
> in terms of potential future adoption of work we do in the extension into
> core schema.org, I think we could set things going in the right direction.
>

Hmm. Many ebooks have page numbers. It seems like a perfectly valid
property to have at the Book level.


> Even without the numberOfPages there are properties that would only be
> relevant to a physically printed item - information about the binding,
> printing format (e.g. folio, octavo), dimensions. This is information
> traditionally recorded in cataloguing, and has specific relevance for
> certain types of collection where the printed form is of interest to users
> (e.g. early printed books)
>
> Finally given that we agree we should have an Ebook type, this would leave
> the useful members of the BookFormatType values as ‘Hardcover’ and
> ‘Paperback’ - which are also properties of the printed book only.


New types don't need to have distinct properties. There are plenty of types
in core schema.org that don't add new properties. For example,
https://schema.org/NGO and https://schema.org/GovernmentOrganization both
derive from https://schema.org/Organization without adding any new
properties.

Presumably this is so because it makes it more convenient for the consumer
to identify the type of resource being described, and for the publisher to
get the markup right--particularly inline markup such as RDFa or microdata,
where you would need to add in a <link property="bookFormatType" href="
http://schema.org/GraphicNovel">, rather than simply declaring <div
typeof="GraphicNovel">.

I'm happy to go either way with GraphicNovel. I went with the
BookFormatType enumeration because there was precedent in core schema.org
and Richard had the other three types proposed. I just want to have some
way of reliably identifying graphic novels.