Re: Proposal: Audiobook

On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 07:47:54AM -0700, Aaron Bradley wrote:
>I think this is a type whose time has come.
>
>I wonder, though, whether an "Audiobook" type should encompass - or at
>least try to account for - audio dramas.  That is a dramatization rather
>than a reading of a book, or an original audio drama, such as one commonly
>encounters on public radio broadcasters like the BBC.
>
>Really the only property that would need to be re-examined in this light is
>"readBy", because of the difference between a "reading" and a "performance."
>
>For both audio books and audio dramas, the existing property performer [1]
>seems well-suited to the task.  And even looking just at the type
>"AudioBook" it seems that "readBy" is an unnecessarily more specific
>version of "performer" (for example, there is no "actor" property for
>TheatreEvent [2]).

I am sympathetic to this perspective. There is a vast set of potential
types of contributions to creative works that the current schema.org
vocabulary does not capture. For example, the long list of credits in
any given movie contains many different roles such as gaffer, key grip,
dressmaker, etc (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111161/fullcredits for
example). Distinguishing these various types of contribution
is worthwhile, but I'm sure we don't want to expand
http://schema.org/CreativeWork or its children to have named properties
for all of these possibilities.

So, to kick an idea around, what if the range of "contributor" and
"performer" included a new type, "Contributor", which would consist of
two new properties:

* participant (range: Organization, Person)
* contribution (range: http://schema.org/Contribution (new type with an
   external enumeration)

For the external enumeration, we could point to an existing vocabulary
like http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators.html; this list includes many
types of contributions beyond what schema.org currently details, but it
is also missing a number just from the one film credit example above.
Alternately, we could go the ProductOntology route and use wikipedia
types like http://www.productontology.org/id/Dressmaker and
http://www.productontology.org/id/Gaffer_(filmmaking) -- I suppose these
contribution types fall under "services", which explains why they're
mapped and enumerated. That said,
http://www.productontology.org/id/Narrator redirects to "Narrative" (per
wikipedia), so PTO isn't a perfect option either. Would a union of both
external enumerations be possible (or does someone have a better
existing vocab in mind)?

I'm not keen on "participant" as the property name for the new type, but
"contributor" is already taken--heh. Having a "contributor" property and
"Contributor" type might be bad form, as well. This is far from a full
proposal!

In the specific case of satisfying the desire for an Audiobook "readBy"
property, the RDFa would look like:

<p property="contributor" typeof="Contributor">Read by: 
   <span property="participant" typeof="Person">Simon Prebble</span>
   <meta property="contribution" content="http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/nrt">
</p>

I believe this is a direction worth exploring, but would not be
surprised if it had already been discussed and dismissed...  if the
latter, then my apologies for wasting bandwidth.

Dan

Received on Friday, 20 September 2013 13:59:45 UTC