schema.org, an ontology for discovery on the web

Phil Barker, Heriot-Watt University

http://people.pjjk.net/phil@philbarker

Centre for Educational Technology and Interoperability Standards

Supporting innovation and interoperability in educational technologyhttp://jisc.cetis.ac.uk

Learning Resource Metadata Initiative

Make it easier to find educational resources by developing a common metadata framework (within schema.org) to describe their educational characteristics

http://www.lrmi.net

Schema.org is a joint effort, in the spirit of sitemaps.org, to improve the web by creating a structured data markup schema supported by major search engines. On-page markup helps search engines understand the information on web pages and provide richer search results. A shared markup vocabulary makes easier for webmasters to decide on a markup schema and get the maximum benefit for their efforts. Search engines want to make it easier for people to find relevant information on the web. Markup can also enable new tools and applications that make use of the structure.

Schema.org FAQ http://schema.org/docs/faq.html (June 2011)

schema.org

Screenshot of MIT OCW page licence CC:BY-NC-SAhttp://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-03sc-differential-equations-fall-2011/

Adapted screenshot of MIT OCW page licence CC:BY-NC-SAhttp://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-03sc-differential-equations-fall-2011/

Resource Title

Creators

Description

Resource Type

Educational level

URIPublisher

SubjectKeywords

GoalsPre-requisites

schema.org = ontology + syntax

Hierarchy of types, each with own properties

Microdata or RDFa in HTML

<h3>Instructor(s)</h3><p itemprop="author">Prof. Arthur Mattuck</p><p itemprop="author">Prof. Haynes Miller</p><p itemprop="author">Dr. Jeremy Orloff</p><p itemprop="author">Dr. John Lewis</p>

<h3>Level</h3><p itemprop="typicalAgeRange"

content="18-21">Undergraduate</p>

(some) schema.org types

(some) schema.org types

(some) schema.org types

schema.org properties for Thing

ThingadditionalType (a URL)description (text)image (a URL)name (text)url (a URL)

(Expected type for property)

(some) schema.org properties

Creative Workabout (a schema.org Thing)author (a schema.org Person or Organization)copyrightHolder (a schema.org Person or Organization)dateCreated (a Date)publisher (a schema.org Organization)and many, many more....

Plus, from ThingadditionalType, description, image, name, url

Emphasis on simplicity and search

<p itemprop="author">Prof. Arthur Mattuck</p>

Should be<p itemprop="author" itemscope

itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"><span itemprop="honorificPrefix">Prof.</span> <span itemprop="givenname">Arthur</span> <span itemprop="familyname">Mattuck</span>

</p>

But even the former helps Google

Other observations

The ontology is growing (discussion at Public-vocabs@w3.org)

Being implemented by web sitesSee http://webdatacommons.org/vocabulary-usage-analysis/

Implementation by Google? Not much obvious use yet Difficult to know what Google does in background Can use to build “niche” searches via Google CSE

Conclusion

Consider using schema.org to help build more sophisticated search services by disambiguating information exposed in web pages.

Licence and attribution

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported licence.

To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California 94105, USA.

By Phil Barker <phil.barker@hw.ac.uk>, JISC CETIS <http://jisc.cetis.ac.uk>