[open-bibliography] Proposed definition for /book/book

Wed Jun 30 16:58:08 UTC 2010

Hi Owen.  The purpose of the exercise that Anne is driving is to fine
tune the Freebase type descriptions to match the actual usage, not
make substantive changes.  What you're seeing is reflective of the
scheme that's in use today.

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 4:12 AM, Owen Stephens <owen at ostephens.com> wrote:

> I have to admit that I think the definition of 'book' given here is slightly
> confusing as it takes a commonly used term and defines it as something
> different.

To some degree this is inevitable, because common usage is to use the
term "book" to mean at least a couple of different things.  People use
it to mean both the author's work as well the particular editor or
copy in our library.  Another possible choice would be to avoid the
use of the term altogether since it's potentially confusing, but I
think it provides a useful anchor to help orient people.  They want
information on "books" not "works" or "manifestations."

> Some of these issues have been discussed widely in the library community,
> and although the conclusions there are perhaps far from perfect, it seems
> that there is some significant overlap but with different terminology. In
> particular I'm thinking of FRBR
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_Requirements_for_Bibliographic_Records)

The target users of the Freebase schema are everyday people, not
librarians, which may account for some of the differences.  The
emphasis is also on pragmatic usefulness with available data and
available user interfaces as opposed to necessarily modeling
everything perfectly.

> What you are defining here as a 'book' seems to have much in common with
> what FRBR terms a 'work'. For me it would make a lot of sense if there could
> be some work to pull this together in some way.

Yes, they are basically equivalent.  I'm not sure how you'd like to
see this pulled together.  I don't think adding a mention of FRBR is
going to help the Freebase user who is trying to decide "What type(s)
should I use with this data I want to enter/query?"  What actions did
you have in mind here?

Tom