A Study on the Corresponding between Schema.org’s Item Types with MARC Genre Terms List

The purpose of this study was to determine the degree of correspondence between data types of Schema.org and the representation of them in the MARC21 Genre Terms List.

This research was an applied research based on a content analysis and the research population was a variety of data entities of the Schema.org. To collect data, a checklist-based tool on MARC Genre Terms List was used to check the degree of correspondence in Schema.org, and the structured observation method was used to initially identify each of the CreativeWork and then other entities in the Scheme.org were analyzed and the types of related data entities were identified

The findings of this study showed that there are 64 source-specific terms in the MARC that have no equivalent data entity in the Schema.org, and only 36% of the MARC Genre Terms List are consistent with the Schema.org. This means that for the 100 MARC Genre Terms List, there were only 36 equivalents in the Schema.org. Twenty-four terms of the MARC Genre Terms List were consistent accurately with the CreativeWork in Schema.org, and 12 were consistent with its other data entities.

To describe and organize digital objects, both properties must be taken into account because most data entities in the web are digitized versions of physical content objects and also considering that Schema.org does not consider some of the data entities in the bibliographic context, it must design the schema to describe all terms of a particular type of cultural heritage context (including the bibliographic context) for removing knowledge gap. It is recommended that specialized refinements and vocabularies of other sections of the cultural heritage (museum and archive context) be adapted to the types of the Schema.org to provide a thorough representation of knowledge in the context of cultural heritage.