Talk:Q571

This item is meant to represent "book" as a media (Q340169). Book: communication medium for a collection of words and/or pictures to represent knowledge, often manifested in bound paper and ink, or in e-books

For clarifications or discussions, see:

• Wikidata:Books task force
• Help:Sources#Book
• ISBN-13 (P212), its talk page, its constraints and its constraint violations

Clarify purpose please

French WP article fr:Livre (document) explicitly refers to a concrete physical object consisting of a set of sheets tied together. I understand that some contributors rather want this item to represent a given creative work of a writer (from which multiple physical copies will be created). @GerardM:, @Izno:, @Shisma:, @Emw:, is there a separate item to represent its physical counterpart? I remember there was a discussion on that aspect on Project chat some time ago; possibly link it here, to ease understanding. thanks - LaddΩ chat ;) 23:21, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

• Of all places, at Wikidata:Project chat/Archive/2013/10#Bot requests for conclusions of 'Migrating away from GND main type' RFC.

That said, the English article definitely disagrees with the French article. My inclination is that this should be about the creative work known as a book, and if we want to get physical, then create a new object for that... --Izno (talk) 01:01, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

• There is not yet any generally-agreed upon item to represent a work's physical counterpart, to my knowledge. A close approximation is applying instance of (P31) or subclass of (P279); but there isn't consensus on that either. This matter relates to type-token distinction. The English article book is similar to the summary of French Wikipedia's 'livre' in its initial description of the subject: "A book is a set of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of ink, paper, parchment, or other materials, usually fastened together to hinge at one side." However, the term 'book' is also used to refer to a set of books, e.g. as the term 'book' is used in the article about Herman Melville's book Moby-Dick.

A recent related discussion is here. There are several ontologies that focus on this type of thing; two notable examples are FRBR / FABIO and IAO. There will be a workshop on this general subject in September at FOIS 2014, as summarized on the NCOR wiki. NCOR records and documents a lot of its meetings (material available here), so I imagine there will be relevant videos and slides available come Fall. Emw (talk) 01:11, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Great discussions, no clear conclusion though. For now, thus, no item for the physical object "book". Fair enough: if one specific physical copy of a book gets represented by an item, it could simply be an instance of (P31) the corresponding generic "creative work" instance item for that book. Thanks - LaddΩ chat ;) 02:14, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

A book is part of what Wikibooks does. They have a project that deals with books. There is the book and than there is the print which is a separate thing. GerardM (talk) 07:26, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

To be or not to be a creative work

Here is an excerpt from this discussion :

"I think not all books are creative works - e.g. a telephone directory. --Avenue (talk) 04:57, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Fair point. Since a creative work is "a manifestation of creative effort such as artwork, literature, music, paintings, and software" and phone books are books that are not creative works (see Feist v. Rural), books are not a subclass of creative work. This means that P107 'creative work' claims should be replaced by P31 'creative work' claims even if the item already has a P31 'book' claim. (...) Emw (talk) 13:39, 5 October 2013 (UTC)"

I still agree with that statement, but book (Q571) is currently a subclass of work (Q386724), so I gather that this opinion did not prevail (the good news is that telephone directory (Q220393) is not instance nor subclass of book). Checking a few items like Moby-Dick (Q174596) or Nineteen Eighty-Four (Q208460), they are both listed as instance of (P31) both book (Q571) and work (Q386724), following the philosophy stated in this discussion.

Again to clarify usage of book (Q571), I would appreciate if anyone could provide some link to any discussion about these considerations. Thanks - LaddΩ chat ;) 02:53, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

maybe you should have a look at Talk:Q8261 --Shisma (talk) 11:47, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

@Laddo:, @Emw: how about adding literary work (Q7725634) for textes that are creative works?! a book (Q571) is an object, not a work.--Shisma (talk) 15:16, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

actually only Individual books should be an instance of book (Q571) --Shisma (talk) 19:31, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

@Shisma:, please do not modify the nature of book (Q571) while it is being discussed - reverting a change made by GerardM two days ago should involve him, since we don't want to enter an edit war.

Now, using instance of (P31) = novel (Q8261) is indeed an option that sounds very interesting to me, but it is an instance of (P31) = literary genre (Q223393) rather than a subclass of book (Q571).

If I was to propose something:

1. let's create a new item "book" to represent the conceptual book entity, not necessarily literary or artistic, from which printed copies could be made; make the current item derive from it but also from "creative work", resulting in this item book (Q571) becoming the creative book one;
2. create an item for the physical object book and move to it most WP languages links that describe sheets tied together; leave all WD links to the current item book (Q571) (most books described by WD items are actually of the creative kind);
3. Later on, we might take example on en:Template:Literature: creating and using literary form for entities like novel (Q8261), to eventually make Moby-Dick and instance of novel rather than simply an instance of book.

Comments welcome. LaddΩ chat ;) 22:32, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

We have a Wikidata:Books task force. If you want to change the definition of this item please inform them first. Also Help:Sources is referring to Q571. And, of cause, Wikidata:Database reports/Constraint violations/P212 is influenced. --Kolja21 (talk) 23:36, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for this info! I'll put that at the top of the page to guide contributors. LaddΩ chat ;) 00:18, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi Laddo, you've changed the French description into: "oeuvre littéraire ...". What's with all the other types/genres of books? "Creative work" includes more. Same problem with Template:Book properties: book (Q571) vs work (Q386724). You've introduced a third possibly: literary work (Q7725634). Again: We really should discuss this at Wikidata:Books task force and not a the talk page of one single item. --Kolja21 (talk) 01:13, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

@Kolja21: Hi Kolja21, I was trying the make the French match the English description; change it back if you believe it is not appropriate. As for Template:Book properties, there were already conflicting references between German vs. Italian and English; I though that a mismatch between languages was real bad, and picked literary work (Q7725634) as the one that I thought was the best match for the sought purpose. I agree this should be discussed in more details, but I have too little time at the moment, sorry, I'll have to leave this to your team. Good luck LaddΩ chat ;) 03:36, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for the feedback. --Kolja21 (talk) 05:04, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

• If book (Q571) will be a subclass of work (Q386724) then we should remove all unnecessary claims p31 q571. --Infovarius (talk) 03:30, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Corrected mismaching definition

For specific instances use this item, for representing the work regardless of its medium, please use text (Q17481121).--Micru (talk) 12:35, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

@Micru:, needs update after your edits. --Infovarius (talk) 06:22, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Proposed update works-editions

See here: Help_talk:Sources#Proposed_update_works-editions. Pinging @Infovarius:.--Micru (talk) 08:30, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

instance of exhibition item

Is there a purpose to the statement

⟨ book (Q571)    ⟩ instance of (P31) ⟨ item of collection or exhibition (Q18593264)    ⟩

 ?

Because … it seems wrong. It implies that any book is an item of a collection or an exhibition, which is utterly wrong. I’ll remove it, but I ask here if someone uses these statement for a purpose to search for an alternative solution we could agree on.

(@Giftzwerg 88: who added the statement)

author  TomT0m / talk page 11:59, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

A book can be part of a library. So it is possible to add books to collections without getting constraint errors.--Giftzwerg 88 (talk) 16:58, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

@Giftzwerg 88: True, but that’s not really what « subclass of » mean. It’s more like « any book is part of a collection ». There is also the item collectible (Q30913035)    which seem to be a duplicate, which is weird, but more like it (a book may interest someone for a collection, but it’s basically true for anything, there is aficionados of really weird things). I think the correct approach would be to add « book » to the constraint that allows them to be added to collections or something like that however. Which property is this ? I’ll attempt this.

Actually I’d expect that this class would be added for editions that are known to be of value for collectors. author  TomT0m / talk page 17:18, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Actually I think I found it, see Property:P217. It seems that the actual requirement is that an item of a collection is supposed to have an inventory number … which is the case for a museum collection for example. The workflow is then, you have a book or anything else in a museum, you classify it as an item of a collection (you add the statement

⟨ item ⟩ instance of (P31) ⟨ item of a collection … ⟩

to this item, this should do the trick), and you also specify the collection in the museum this refers to … this does not seem to be a requirement for any personal collection at all. author  TomT0m / talk page 17:56, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Subclass of written work?

Hi,

Last August, @CamelCaseNick: added

⟨ book (Q571)    ⟩ subclass of (P279) ⟨ written work (Q47461344)    ⟩

. With the other value in subclass of (P279), it make this item both tangible (as an object) and intangible (as an idea) which seems wrong and cause problem elsewhere (especially for Wikidata:WikiProject Books).

Cheers, VIGNERON (talk) 06:43, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes I'm pretty certain this breaks the reduced FRBR model (described at WikiProject Books) Wikidata has adopted for written works (not to mention is just nonsensical and breaks the basic ontology). I believe this is a recurring problem with this item because it is often used incorrectly and then well intentioned editors see constraint violations and add such a statement to "solve" them - unaware they are violating the widely agreed upon modelling.

I may be mistaken, but believe this item should represent the concept of a physical book (i.e. an instance of an "edition" level item). SilentSpike (talk) 08:45, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

 Comment A "book" can be a written work (abstract concept), or an edition, or a particular exemplar (specific physical copy), or a volume of a multi-volume work, or a subunit of a work (especially in classical literature). Use of book (Q571) is problematic, and is probably best avoided altogether. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:50, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Is book subclass of collectible?

@Infovarius: I'd argue not, as not all books are particularly collectible; if we take a broad enough view of collectible, everything is collectible (rocks, plants, animals, anything). limited edition book (Q58807269) and rare book (Q203490) are some of the possible collectible book (Q115920545), but maybe not all? At least they wouldn't be catalogued that way by vendors (e.g. see https://www.amazon.com/b?node=4991425011) What do you think? TiagoLubiana (talk) 14:40, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Well, the new item is a variant of the solution. Also I wouldn't say say "vendors" are the last instance (why there are films and TV at that page?). --Infovarius (talk) 04:40, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

What to use for a non-fiction published book listed on Worldcat with ISBN?

No matter what I do, I get error messages when I try to create a book, whether as literary work or book.

Has the matter been decided?

What "instance of" to use?

Can I add the Worldcat ID?

Thank you,

LAP959 (talk) 07:36, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

• There are actually two different but connected entities here: a literary work and its edition. If you provide the link to the item, I can help to format it right.--Алексей Скрипник (talk) 13:45, 17 March 2023 (UTC)