[Freebase-discuss] new ISBN schema

[Jeff Prucher]

On Sat, May 5, 2012 at 8:57 AM, Thad Guidry <thadguidry at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2 questions...
>
>
> 1. Lots of things are a "cataloged_instance".  But Freebase only has a few
> of the categories of things that are cataloged.
>
> Most of the cataloged items that get much love universally are in the
> Media commons such as Books, CDs, DVDs.  I understand that.
>
> But what about the product categories that are outside the "namespace" of
> Media...then it's handled case by case ?  Camera Lenses.
>
> or handled with more Types and more Schema under a new namespace ?
>  Magazine ISSN numbers.
>
> I just want to understand the forward thinking overall for future
> expansion opportunities.
>

Camera lenses are consumer products, and therefore have a GTIN property.

ISSNs are a good question. We've talking about different ways of handling
them a couple times, but I don't think we ever got anywhere. These might be
a candidate for cataloged_instance, but I'm not sure. I don't know if they
have the same problems of "soft key-ness" and being used by multiple types
that ISBNs do or not.


>
>
> 2. ISBN is a number given by an authority.  (actually about 160
> authoritative agencies worldwide -
> http://www.isbn.org/standards/home/isbn/us/isbnqa.asp#Q6 )
>
> Did we forgot that or care about approaching an ISBN identifier as being
> authoritative having a namespace ?  or does it not matter much since it is
> handled more like ICANN ?
>

We cannot go down the namespace path with ISBNs because they're not unique
identifiers (hence the old soft key system). Plus, they're actually
assigned by publishers anyway; only the publisher blocks are assigned by
central authorities.

Jeff


>
> --
> -Thad
> http://www.freebase.com/view/en/thad_guidry
>
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