1. schema.org, an ontology for
discovery on the web
Phil Barker,
Heriot-Watt University
http://people.pjjk.net/phil
@philbarker
2. Centre for Educational Technology
and Interoperability Standards
Supporting innovation and interoperability in educational technology
http://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
3. schema.org
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)
4. Screenshot of MIT OCW page licence CC:BY-NC-SA
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-03sc-differential-equations-fall-2011/
5. Resource Title
Creators
Educational level
URI
Publisher
Subject
Keywords
Goals
Pre-requisites
Resource Type
Description
Adapted screenshot of MIT OCW page licence CC:BY-NC-SA
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-03sc-differential-equations-fall-2011/
6. schema.org = ontology + syntax
Hierarchy of types,
each with own Microdata or RDFa
properties in HTML
7. <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>
11. schema.org properties for Thing
Thing
additionalType (a URL)
description (text) (Expected type for property)
image (a URL)
name (text)
url (a URL)
12. (some) schema.org properties
Creative Work
about (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 Thing
additionalType, description, image, name, url
13. 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
14. Other observations
The ontology is growing
(discussion at Public-vocabs@w3.org)
Being implemented by web sites
See 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
15. Conclusion
Consider using schema.org to help build more
sophisticated search services by disambiguating
information exposed in web pages.
16. Licence and attribution
By Phil Barker <phil.barker@hw.ac.uk>, JISC
CETIS <http://jisc.cetis.ac.uk>
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.