How to describe a page elsewhere?

Hello all,
I'm working on some examples for marking up educational/learning 
resources using schema.org (including the proposed LRMI properties).  
There are quite a lot of catalogue-like services which provide some of 
the best descriptions for learning resources without actually providing 
the resource itself. They are simply there to help people find learning 
resources held elsewhere. A fairly typical example would be the National 
Science Digital Library, with pages like 
http://nsdl.org/search/resource/2200/20110414163807295T

I can see two options for marking up these pages, 1. add schema.org 
microdata to describe the webpage as it is and say that it refers to 
something elsewhere which is a learning resource with certain 
characteristics, or 2. just add microdata to describe the learning 
resource.  I'ld be interested in any advice/opinions/speculation on 
which might be the best approach, especially if you think there are any 
pitfalls to either approach.

For the NSDL example, the first approach would give a description along 
the lines of:

Item
*Type:* http://schema.org/webpage
    url = http://nsdl.org/search/resource/2200/20110414163807295T
    provider = /Item/( 1 )
    publisher = /Item/( 1 )
    creator = /Item/( 1 )
    about = /Item/( 2 )

Item 1
*Type:* http://www.pjjk.net/organization
    name = National Science Digital Library
    url = http://nsdl.org/

Item 2
*Type:* http://schema.org/creativework
    name = Learning About Ratios: A Sandwich Study
    url = 
http://www.cteonline.org/portal/default/Resources/Viewer/ResourceViewer?action=2&resid=227315 

    learningresourcetype = Instructional Material
    creator = ...
    about = ...
    ...etc


The second would mark up the page at 
http://nsdl.org/search/resource/2200/20110414163807295T to produce:

Item
*Type:* http://schema.org/creativework
    name = Learning About Ratios: A Sandwich Study
    url = 
http://www.cteonline.org/portal/default/Resources/Viewer/ResourceViewer?action=2&resid=227315 

    learningresourcetype = Instructional Material
    creator = ...
    about = ...
    ....etc


As I see it,  the first approach has some advantages since it 
acknowledges that the page being marked up is in itself a useful 
resource, and allows us to say some fairly sophisticated things like the 
description on the NSDL page and the "learning about ratios" resource 
being available from different people (maybe under different licenses 
etc.) However it might be over-sophisticated and the big search engines 
might just ignore the information about the learning resource. 
Incidentally, if this approach does have any merit, is "about" the right 
relationship between the two resources?

The second approach has the advantage of being straightforward, but I 
wonder whether search engines might not deprecate in some way pages that 
claim a URL other than their own?


Any comments welcome, thanks.

Phil

-- 
<http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/~philb/>



-- 
Heriot-Watt University is the Sunday Times
Scottish University of the Year 2011-2012

We invite research leaders and ambitious early career
researchers to join us in leading and driving research
in key inter-disciplinary themes. Please see 

http://www.hw.ac.uk/researchleaders

for further information and how to apply.

Heriot-Watt University is a Scottish charity
registered under charity number SC000278.