Publishing

Publishing: "Genre" as properties of "Book" and "Short Story"

2008-07-17T01:04:29.0012Z

I'm curious why "Genre" is not a property of the type "Written Work" but exists separately under both "Book" and "Short Story" (though not "Poem").

It seems silly that some short stories have the genre of "Short Story", which would make more sense if tagged on the more generic "Written Work" instead.

Publishing: editor in chief for periodicals?

2008-06-27T22:40:07.0000Z

Most periodicals should also be typed as Employer. The intent was that editorial staff could be entered there.

Publishing: editor in chief for periodicals?

2008-06-27T17:07:45.0012Z

I don't see a editor in chief or executive editor in any of the newspaper, magazine or periodicals. May I suggest a field be introduced if none exists?

Publishing: Different authors between book editions

2008-05-29T21:33:49.0007Z

OK, looks good. :)

Publishing: Different authors between book editions

2008-05-29T06:51:52.0000Z

Sounds like something that'd be easier to visualize once it's filled out on the board. I'll come by tomorrow.

Publishing: Different authors between book editions

2008-05-28T20:23:06.0007Z

What do you think of the proposed "Edition series" --> "Book" --> "Book edition" model? Especially if we can come up with a less ambiguous name than "edition series"?

Publishing: Different authors between book editions

2008-05-28T19:47:27.0007Z

Yes, there is a huge difference between the various editions of the first edition of Compilers and the various editions of the second edition of Compilers. But the "hardcover CD-rom package" edition ("binding", really) of the Compilers, 2nd edition, still has a much closer relationship to the original Compilers book than does say, David Flanagan's Java in a Nutshell. Modeling this relationship is of interest to me.

As you said, two definitions exist for "edition", one is used to describe more or less binding, the other is used to describe content. We have the schema to model the first case, I propose we come up with a schema to model the second case.

Publishing: Different authors between book editions

2008-05-28T19:00:05.0000Z

Faye, would you describe the hardcover and paperback editions of the first edtion of Compilers as having the same relationship to each other as to the hardcover edition of the second edition of Compilers? Because I don't think they do. The hardcover and paperback are just different bindings of more-or-less the same content; the hardcover of the 2nd ed. is a binding of a volume containing different content.

We're not actually redefining "book edition" at all. What the model does is specify one of two common meanings for "book edition". The relevant definitions are (courtesy of the American Heritage Dictionary, 4th ed.): "The form in which a publication is issued: a paperback edition of a novel; an annotated edition of Shakespeare." and "A version of an earlier publication having substantial changes or additions: a newly revised edition of a standard reference work." The type Book Edition was designed with the first definition in mind; you (understandably) want to use it for the second.

Hanging translations off a Book Edition is certainly possible, but which of the three editions of the original edition of Compilers would you hang the translation off of?

I like Ed's idea of treating books with multiple editions (of the second sort) as a series. I'm not sure about the name -- I think "book edition series" gets us into the same trap that "book edition" is doing. I would expect something called "book edition series" to collect instances of the type Book Edition (like the Harvard Library or Norton Critical Editions); but I don't know what else to call something that collects instances of the type Book that were published in serial editions.

Publishing: Different authors between book editions

2008-05-28T17:56:58.0000Z

I rather like that idea, edition series.

Publishing: Different authors between book editions

2008-05-28T02:29:34.0000Z

Books with multiple editions are somewhat analogous to Motorcycle series, which are one of the most common Wikipedia motorcycle subjects. A motorcycle series is a grouping of the same motorcycle body styles of the same motorcycle model over multiple model years (e.g., Harley-Davidson XL1200N, BWM F650 CS). Motorcycle series can even be nested (e.g., the Honda CBR series includes many subseries). I found that series was often used to provide a consistent name for a group of motorcycles that were thought of as a collective but not identical. Maybe a book_edition_series type could be used with a property of "Book editions within this series"? This would allow Compilers to be a topic with properties that describe the entire series including links to the various Compilers book editions.

Publishing: Different authors between book editions

2008-05-28T01:53:59.0000Z

I was all but convinced, but now that I've given this a little more thought, I have to admit that modeling Book Editions as Books still bothers me.

First, the more philosophical argument: I think of the second edition of the Compilers book as the second edition of the Compilers book because it is, as we say even now, the second edition of the Compilers book. When we redefine common terms like "book" and "book edition" (completely disregarding M-W's many wonderful editions of their hot-selling dictionary) to accommodate a "special case", we introduce an extra hurdle in the learning curve new users must overcome before they can enter quality data. Perhaps not so bad that one can't shrug it off as I was tempted to do, but nonetheless it seems forced, sloppy, compromised, and resigned to having to live with data and schema that are...incongruent -- and I don't mean that as a criticism but just a reflection on the fact that no neat little boxes of Types, no matter how thoughtfully constructed with perfectly curved-out included typed and supporting types and cotype usage, can accommodate the myriad varieties of real-world data that's beautiful and complicated and convoluted at the same time and oh God I've become Mark Morford. I do ponder the cumulative effect of these counter-intuitive "special cases." Maybe it's just me, but I can't seem to go a week on Freebase without running into these "special cases". :)

Then again, it also seems intuitive to me, at least after mulling over the Compilers book data, that translations should be at the Book Edition level. David Flanagan's "Java in a Nutshell" has gone through 5 editions in the last 10 years. If I'm looking for a translated version, I'm definitely going to make sure it's of the 5th edition. Does that mean we model every book edition (that belongs to a book with at least one other edition with different content) that has an associated translation as a separate book? I'm confused.

Oh, and how does one reconnect the severed link between a book's multiple editions when they are modeled each as a separate book? Looking at each edition as a book, how do I know if other editions exist?

Publishing: Different authors between book editions

2008-05-27T23:53:23.0007Z

These are some of the thoughts that make think it makes more sense to model it as two books. The original version of Compilers was published in at least six editions, including three translations. All these editions have a similar relationship to the original (three-author) Compilers. But I don't think they have the same relationship to the four-author version. Taking this further, I think it's quite useful to be able to say which edition the translations are made from. If we combine the two editions at the Book level, it is impossible to know which version the translation is of, which might be valuable to know, especially for a hypothetical work that might have had translations made of multiple editions.

Another analogy is dictionaries. I have a hard time thinking of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition as being the same book as Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 2nd Edition, say.

But I do agree that to a certain extent, we're dealing with Theseus' paradox, and any solution is likely to be idiosyncratic. (Even WorldCat, which conflates all of the various types of editions of Compilers as editions of a single work, only conflates the various versions of the 10th and 11th eds. of the M-W Collegiate Dict.)

You can perform an end-run around it, though. You could simply not create a Book topic for the book, and just have individual Book Editions, each linked to the appropriate authors.

Publishing: Different authors between book editions

2008-05-27T23:31:06.0000Z

Souldn't each edition be a new book? I can think of many examples when different editions of textbooks have different authors or editors. There are often different cover artists and even publishers. A similar argument could be made for printings if the cover, forward, etc. have changed.

Publishing: Plans for scraping publishing data?

2008-04-28T18:43:59.0007Z

I agree about that! I can tell you that we don't have any current plans to import written works in bulk other than books, book editions, and possibly academic publications, so poems, essays, stories, etc. that aren't in Wikipedia will definitely be needed. And, for topics we got from Wikipedia, anything that's not in an infobox or implied by a category, will probably not be extracted in the near future. (By "implied by a category", i mean that a category like "Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle implies information about the author, the series, and one of the characters.)

Publishing: Plans for scraping publishing data?

2008-04-28T18:30:20.0000Z

Thanks Jeff! It's interesting to know what the plans are for these data loads. It's more satisfying to fill in data if you feel like all/most of the work that could have been done by a bot is already finished.

Publishing: Plans for scraping publishing data?

2008-04-28T18:13:16.0007Z

We were waiting until the publishing schemata stabilized before going after large amounts of data. We're mostly done mucking about with it now, so we're going to start doing more with this. In terms of getting Wikipedia data typed correctly, we have some bots that look at categories and infobox templates which should type more of the essays, stories, poems, books, etc. that are in Wikipedia, and in some cases be able to associate them with authors.

We can't get Amazon or WorldCat data, because Amazon and OCLC don't have licenses compatible with CC-BY, alas. We do have some data from ISBNDB, which we're working on reconciling and loading.

Publishing: Plans for scraping publishing data?

2008-04-28T17:47:09.0012Z

A quick search for "an essay by" on Wikipedia.org gives 800 results compared to the 96 pieces of short non-fiction on Freebase:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=KjC&q=site%3Awikipedia.org+%22an+essay+by%22&btnG=Search

More generally, what are the plans to fill in publishing data? Can Freebase scrape Amazon or WorldCat data ( http://www.worldcat.org/ )?

Publishing: Different type for collections of poetry, short stories, essays, etc.

2007-12-22T07:50:28.0007Z

You might want to check out the Published work type and the Short story type. Also, there is a Help Center topic on Entering the Contents of a Book or Periodical.

Publishing: Different type for collections of poetry, short stories, essays, etc.

2007-12-22T04:38:09.0007Z

Has there been any resolution on this? There are some books which are really just collections of short stories that I'd like to enter.

Publishing: Capturing the pseudonym under which a work was published

2007-10-19T00:13:40.0007Z

Not yet. We had a model, but we never got around to debugging it and putting it up. We'll get to it eventually, though!

Publishing: Capturing the pseudonym under which a work was published

2007-10-18T21:42:18.0012Z

Is there an existing property for indicating, for example, that Sylvia Plath's novel "The Bell Jar" was initially published under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas" (later publications have used her real name)?

Publishing: Will attempt to model physical storage locations of publications privately

2007-10-08T23:16:32.0012Z

Thanks Jeff. I'm working on an article about Freebase for Searcher magazine (http://www.infotoday.com/searcher) and I think I'm getting the hang of things here. Likely what I'm asking for are already available as types under the System category of domains.

Publishing: Type for physical storage locations of publications

2007-10-08T21:47:34.0000Z

What sorts of properties do you think they should have? Or, perhaps another way of asking would be, what sorts of data are you interested in storing? The quickest thing would probably be to model them in your private domain. Once you're happy with the model, we can see about moving it to the root level domain.

Publishing: Type for physical storage locations of publications

2007-10-07T17:42:47.0005Z

I would like to see some Types added to the Publishing domain that represent the physical storage locations of publications:

Institutional repository (there are several existing Topics that I will suggest be merged)

Library

Warehouse

Thanks!

Publishing: Type for segments in religious books

2007-08-01T18:07:08.0007Z

Hi necz0r, I see what you're trying to model here. Before you come up with new schema, take a look at our existing types to see if they can be used to suit your need.

The "Religious Text" type in the Religion Domain is intentionally not named "Religious Book" so that it could apply to everything from a single article to more "anthology"-like volumes like the Bible. Topics can have multiple types in Freebase, as they do in real life. So you can co-type the Bible as Religious Text, a Book and Publication, thus allowing applicable properties to be entered. A Publication has contents that could be separate works from different authors, which suits religious texts such as the Bible. There is also an existing Excerpt Type in the Publishing Domain that can be used to indicate segments in religious books. BTW, another type that might interest you is Translated Work in the Publishing Domain. Religious text is often well translated into many languages. If you have data in that area, I encourage you to add them to Freebase.

Publishing: Type for segments in religious books

2007-08-01T17:33:50.0007Z

This is a good idea; over in the religion domain, there's a "religious text" type. I could see something like this in either the publishing or religion domain. I'd try modeling it first in your private domain and see what you can work out. Feel free to ask here (or in the religion domain) for help, advice, etc.

Publishing: Type for segments in religious books

2007-08-01T07:06:10.0011Z

Books like the Bible or the Book of Mormon are compilations of various sources, so their structure is segments with chapters inside each division. It would be nice having a type for this, such as "Segment (Religious text)".

Under the main entry data it would have fields "author", "time of writing", "described time period", "notable characters", and on the right hand side "contained in" to refer to what book(s) it'd be in.

(Or something similar, I'm open to suggestions. I find a need to distinguish because it appears like there are two religous texts called "Book of Mormon" where one entry describes the whole book and another describes a segment in the book with the same title).

Publishing: Book/Story Location?

2007-07-05T19:10:19.0007Z

Are we distinguishing between a real place (Berkeley, CA) used as the setting of a fictional work vs. a fictional place (Neptune, CA) invented for a fictional work? Is "fictional setting" to be used for both?

Publishing: Book/Story Location?

2007-06-27T23:50:55.0007Z

There is a "fictional setting" type in the fictional universes domain, which can be used this way. The way to add the property to a work of literature is to add the type "work of fiction" to the topic in question. The fictional universe domain is pretty new, and we're still figuring out parts of it, so the documentation hasn't filtered out to related domains. "Short story" now has "work of fiction" as an included type, but existing stories aren't grandfathered in, alas.

Publishing: Book/Story Location?

2007-06-27T23:00:29.0012Z

Hi, the Film Domain has a Film Location type that can be co-typed to places films are made, such as San Francisco for films like Vertigo. I'd like to see a similar type in the Publishing Domain to capture actual locations used in published work. I'm approaching this with fictional work in mind, but I suppose it could be applied to nonfiction as well.

Publishing: Different type for collections of poetry, short stories, essays, etc.

2007-03-28T16:58:37.0006Z

How about having a parent class that all contents: stories, poems, plays, etc. are subtypes of. That type would then be the expected type for property contents.

Publishing: Different type for collections of poetry, short stories, essays, etc.

2007-03-27T17:25:28.0006Z

What I'm trying to do, ultimately, is find a universal way to handle contents in a book (magazine, etc.), since the contents of an anthology, collection, omnibus, or magazine issue can include stories, poems, whole books, plays, and a bunch of things we haven't even typed yet like comics, comic strips, essays, etc. So a co-type with a "contents" property is one of the things I'm exploring, but the contents has to accept multiple types for it to be at all useful (unless we go with the very ugly method of having "story contents", "poem contents", "play contents", etc. for all instances). I have a few ideas about how to make this work, but it's taking longer than I had hoped.

Publishing: Different type for collections of poetry, short stories, essays, etc.

2007-03-21T21:02:54.0006Z

I was running into a similar problem regarding SF story collections and being able to link up short stories to collections. How about Anthology type?

Publishing: Different type for collections of poetry, short stories, essays, etc.

2007-03-21T20:09:05.0006Z

I'm currently working on this very problem. You've identified some of the main issues around this problem, and they're proving surprisingly hard to work out, especially since the same structure will have to support magazine issue contents, etc. And don't even get me started on serialized books.

Publishing: Different type for collections of poetry, short stories, essays, etc.

2007-03-21T19:57:29.0006Z

I'd like to be able to enter the individual poems and short stories published in a book as properties of that book. For example, the book "The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 1" would have the following: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2147

The current Book type doesn't allow it, and perhaps as it is it wouldn't make sense to just add a "contents" property for Book , since all novels published as books just contain themselves. So maybe a new Type or Types are in order:

Type: Collected Works (need a better name), parent type Book , property Content , expected type: something that covers all writing pieces that could be collected: poems, short stories, eassyas, etc.

Thoughts? Thanks.