Entering Data for All Written Works

Properties of the Written work type  

• Author: This can be the author, poet, playwright, reviewer, or other type of writer. Only the primary contributors should be listed here; people who have only contributed introductions, or works collected in an anthology, for example, should not be listed. Multi-author works should display the authors in the order in which they are credited in the text; this is especially important for scholarly publications.
  • See also the notes under Editor, below.
• Editor: The editor of the work; this will usually be used for anthologies, textbooks, and other reference works.
  • Note that authors (which includes editors), like all topics in Freebase, can have only one display name for their topics. Because many authors publish works either under a pseudonym or under a variation of their given name, the name of their topic may be different from the way their name is listed on the work.
  • Note also that if you create a new author via these properties, Freebase will automatically add the type Person to the topic. If the author is actually a company, organization, government agency or the like, please edit that topic and remove the type Person from it.
• Date written: This should be the date the work was completed, if known. This is especially useful for older texts where the publication dates are not known or relevant and for works that were published substantially after their completion.
• Copyright date: The date or dates that this work was copyrighted, if any.
• Date of first publication: The first time the work was published in any form, if known.
• Subjects: The subjects that this work is about; this can be a highly structured value, such as those used by the Library of Congress, or can be a simpler value.
• Original language: The language(s) that the text was first composed in. See Entering a Translated Work of Literature for help on entering translations.
• Online versions: This provides a link to any online versions of the text. You can access this property in the Weblinks box; when you enter a URL, the menu in the type column will include the option "online versions".

Translations

See Entering a Translated Work of Literature for information about entering translations.

Other types that can be added to Written Works

The type Written work only contains the most basic information, but this will be sufficient only for a very small number of works. More information than can be stored in just these properties can be found for most types of writing. These are the types currently in the Freebase commons that complement Written work and their properties.

Book

See Entering Data for a Book for more information about using this type.

Short Story

A short story is any work of prose fiction shorter in length than a novel. There is obviously going to be a fuzzy boundary, so use your best judgment if you're not sure. Note also that short stories can be published as stand-alone books. In these cases, the topic should have both the Book and Short story types.

• Characters: any characters who appear in the story.
• Part of series: if the story is part of a series of stories (or stories and books), that can be entered here.
• Genre describes the class of literature the story belongs to, rather than its subject matter.

Poem

Note that, like short stories, poems can be published as stand-alone books. In these cases, the topic should have both the Book and Poem types.

• Verse Form: the form of verse used in the poem
• Meter: the meter, if any, that the poem uses

Scholarly Article

Review

The Review type can be used for a review of any type of media: book, film, video game, etc.

• Reviewed Work is the work or works that are reviewed in the article. Since a single review column often covers more than one work, all works reviewed in the column should be listed here, rather than creating a separate review for each.
• Note that Review has an included type of Published work; this is because a review is almost always contained in a larger publication, such as a magazine or newspaper issue or a book. See Entering the Contents of a Book or Periodical for information about how to enter information about where the review was published.
• You can also enter the reviews for a specific work (book, film, etc.) from that work’s own topic page by adding the type Reviewed work to the topic. This will add the property Reviews of this work, which will allow you to enter any reviews by following the steps above.

Short Non-fiction

All types of short non-fiction that don't fall into another category can be entered using the Short non-fiction type. This includes essays, articles, introductions, etc. The difference between these modes of writing is not always clear-cut, and there are probably more different possible types of non-fiction writing than it would make sense to try to model (especially since they all have pretty much the same types of data we can collect).

• Mode of Writing is the type of work the piece is, e.g. an essay, article, introduction, etc.
  • This is an enumerated list, which helps to limit the possible number of choices, and prevents redundant types. However, if the mode you want does not appear on the list, you can add it from the Short Non-fiction Variety page.
• Note that Short non-fiction has an included type of Published work; this is because works of this kind are almost always contained in a larger publications, such as magazine or newspaper issues or books. See Entering the Contents of a Book or Periodical for information about how to enter information about where the piece has been published.