Re: How to describe a page elsewhere?

Just chiming in with a new use case...

"...the first approach has some advantages since it acknowledges that the 
page being marked up is in itself a useful resource".

We are working with a wide variety of publishers of which several have no 
web-based resources or are looking to tag some of their non-web-based 
resources. I know that this is not the core audience for Schema.org, 
however, it still represents how many instructional resources are 
instantiated and distributed. If we ask these publishers create a reference 
page for each component of each resource I'm pretty certain that these will 
not be useful resources but simply be a way for an educator to identify 
what part of a larger resource will be useful in addressing their 
instructional needs. This strategy lets us engage more mainstream 
publishers as they are building their digital strategies and transfer their 
new found LRMI knowledge to their digital offerings.

In this case, is the latter of the two options better than the first?

Thanks in advance for the community wisdom!

- Michael

On Monday, April 16, 2012 6:41:10 AM UTC-7, Phil Barker wrote:
>
>  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.orgmicrodata 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/> <http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/~philb/>
>
>
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