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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/18-03sc-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/18-03sc-differential-equations-fall-2011/
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
Thing
additionalType
description
image
name
url
(a URL)
(text)
(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)
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
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 [email protected])
 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
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 <[email protected]>, 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
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300, San Francisco, California 94105, USA.