[Freebase-discuss] [BULK] Re: new ISBN schema

[Thad Guidry]

On Tue, May 8, 2012 at 2:23 PM, Jeff Prucher <jprucher at google.com> wrote:

>
>
> 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.
>

I think ISO already said NO to the soft key-ness of ISSNs ? :
http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail?csnumber=39601

and here's the list of ISO working groups on the various up and coming
international codes primarily around this grand idea of ours for Cataloged
Instance, and may have more I am not aware of:

http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_technical_committee.html?commid=48836



>
>>
>>
>> 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
>
>

Ah, makes sense.  I did not know that about publisher blocks themselves.
Thanks!

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