schema.org in the wild: libraries++

Schema.org, SchemaBibExtend - Structured Data on the Web

DCMI 2014

Dan Scott / +Dan Scott

Systems Librarian, Laurentian University

Library holdings as schema:Product + schema:Offer

Blame Richard Wallis (Nov 2012 - integration of GoodRelations). Or Jeff Young (June 2013 - investigation of IndividualProduct).

Or maybe Eric Miller (Oct. 2012):

From eric miller to Everyone(04:28:44 PM)

i used products only to make the point that what schema.org is focused on really is about helping accelate more effective discovery of things that can be bought / sold. We (in the library community) can recognize this and leverage this direction to support our (more content focused) requirements.

Time for a syllogism

  1. Search engines want to connect people to products
  2. Libraries want to provide useful resources to people
    ... ergo ...
  3. Libraries should present their resources as products that search engines can offer to people

GoodRelations e-commerce vocabulary

  1. An agent (e.g. a person or an organization),
  2. An object (e.g. a camcorder, a house, a car,...) or service (e.g. a haircut),
  3. A promise (offer) to transfer some rights (ownership, temporary usage, a certain license, ...) on the object or to provide the service for a certain compensation (e.g. an amount of money), made by the agent and related to the object or service, and
  4. A location from which this offer is available (e.g. a store, a bus stop, a gas station,...).

Library holdings-as-schema.org vocabulary

  1. A agent schema:Library that offers goods,
  2. A object schema:Product (e.g. a book, DVD, vinyl record, map),
  3. A promise schema:Offer to provide the product, usually for free, made by the library
  4. A location schema:availableAtOrFrom from which this offer is available (e.g. a section of the library).

Hey, it turns out AbeBooks.com uses Product / Offer!

Tested against Karen Coyle's holdings gallery

Unstructured -> structured -> linked data