[Data-modeling] Proposed refactoring in the publishing domain

[Jeff Prucher]

There have been several requests made, over the last few months, to allow
for more flexibility of attributing authorship and other contributions to
written works, and also to add various properties to a number of types in
the publishing domain. Toward this end, I've created a new type, "written
work" that will be an included type on all the various types that represent
written works -- book, short story, poem, short non-fiction, review, and
translation.

The new type is currently on sandbox. I'd appreciate it if anyone who is
interested could take a look at it and let me know what you think. Please
look before Monday evening (Pacific Time), since sandbox will be refreshed
then.
http://sandbox.freebase.com/view/schema/book/written_work

I've filled out the contents of the April 2007 issue of the Magazine of
Fantasy and Science Fiction as an example. Click the various items in the
contents property to see the type in action.
http://sandbox.freebase.com/view/guid/9202a8c04000641f800000000514f951

One feature is to treat authorship (or similar form of creative
contribution) as a compound value type which will allow for multiple types
of contribution to be recorded in the same property and for all the
disparate types of works to be listed together on the contributors' pages.
Currently, author and editor are treated as separate properties; having a
single property will allow Freebase to reconcile more easily to other
data-sources, which usually store these in the same field. This will also
allow us to record books where the illustrator is tied to the book itself,
rather to individual editions (as in most children's picture books, but as
opposed to, say, an illustrated edition of Huckleberry Finn).
See http://sandbox.freebase.com/view/guid/9202a8c04000641f8000000006c3521e
and http://sandbox.freebase.com/view/make_way_for_ducklings for some further
examples.

Another of the new type is that a number of other properties can usefully be
shared by all types of written works, rather than being distributed onto
each. These properties are: original language, date written, copyright date,
date of first publication, and online versions. Others will probably arise,
but this seems like a good set to start with.

(I'm copying the developers list in case anyone is writing an application
using any of the publishing domain types.)

Thanks in advance,
Jeff Prucher
Type Librarian & Ontologist
Metaweb