Referencing External Descriptions

It is often desirable to reference an external description for another resource, the author of book for instance, as well as including the name in the basic description. We do this in the HTML display by making the name a link.

These examples demonstrate how that basic concept can be described in data terms.

RDFa

<div vocab="http://schema.org/" typeof="Book" resource="http://example.com/shop/item/1234">
    Title: <span property="name">Dune</span><br/>
    Author: <a property="author" typeof="Person" href="http://viaf.org/viaf/59083797">
            <span property="name">Frank Herbert</span>
            </a><br/>
    ISBN: <span property="isbn">1439501661</span>
</div>

Microdata

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Book" itemid="http://example.com/shop/item/1234">
    Title: <span itemprop="name">Dune</span><br/>
    Author: <a itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person" 
           itemid="http://viaf.org/viaf/59083797" href="http://viaf.org/viaf/59083797">
          <span itemprop="name">Frank Herbert</span>
          </a><br/>
    ISBN: <span itemprop="isbn">1439501661</span>
 </div>

Turtle

@prefix schema: <http://schema.org/> .
<http://example.com/shop/item/1234>
   rdf:type schema:Book;
   schema:name "Dune";
   schema:author <http://viaf.org/viaf/59083797>;
   schema:isbn "123456677" .

<http://viaf.org/viaf/59083797>
   rdf:type schema:Person;
   schema:name "Frank Herbert" .