schema org an ontology for discovery on the

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 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

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)

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

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 -03 sc-differential-equations-fall-2011/

schema. org = ontology + syntax Hierarchy of types, each with own properties Microdata or RDFa in HTML

<h 3>Instructor(s)</h 3> <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> <h 3>Level</h 3> <p itemprop="typical. Age. Range" content="18 -21">Undergraduate</p>

(some) schema. org types

(some) schema. org types

(some) schema. org types

schema. org properties for Thing additional. Type description image name url (a URL) (text) (a URL) (Expected type for property)

(some) schema. org properties Creative Work about (a schema. org Thing) author (a schema. org Person or Organization) copyright. Holder (a schema. org Person or Organization) date. Created (a Date) publisher (a schema. org Organization) and many, many more. . Plus, from Thing additional. Type, 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="honorific. Prefix">Prof. </span> <span itemprop="givenname">Arthur</span> <span itemprop="familyname">Mattuck</span> </p> But even the former helps Google

Other observations v The ontology is growing (discussion at Public-vocabs@w 3. org) v Being implemented by web sites See http: //webdatacommons. org/vocabulary-usage-analysis/ v Implementation by Google? v Not much obvious use yet v Difficult to know what Google does in background v 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 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.