[Data-modeling] More publishing changes: adding link from "author" to "book edition"

[Jeff Prucher]

I'm thinking about adding a new property to "book edition", which will link
it directly to the "author" type, rather than having the only link to
"author" be mediated through the "book" type. This is a bit of a
denormalization, but allows us to accurately associate book editions to
authors without necessarily having to reconcile different editions of the
same book together. (This reconciliation is desirable -- don’t get me wrong,
but it can be very difficult.) This property essentially mimics the way
"musical artist" and "musical track" are related in Freebase -- artists are
linked directly to both albums (which contain tracks) and the tracks
themselves. It also makes the book schema more easily compatible with MARC,
and probably other bibliographic schemata, which does not reconcile separate
book editions together, and additionally will hopefully make it easier for
naïve users to input the books on their shelves directly without having to
figure out the whole book/book edition relationship which is confusing to a
lot of people. Ideally, of course, I'd like to see all book editions
reconciled to their books, but this can be done post-hoc either by automated
processes or geeky bibliophiles -- I mean, the community. :)

Sample:
Toni Morrison, with her novel "Beloved" entered both as a "book" and as four
"book editions". The editions are linked both directly to the Toni Morrison
topic and to the Beloved "book" topic.
http://sandbox.freebase.com/view/en/toni_morrison

Jeff Prucher
Type Librarian & Ontologist
Metaweb Technologies, Inc.