Property Templates: Types of fields and options for each

To set up a template, you fill in template metdata and configure Property Templates. You'll need one Property Template for every field you want in the form that will be created from this template.

After you open a blank template by clicking the New template button the Resource Templates tab, your blank template has one Property Template. A template must have at least one Property Template configured. In other words, a cataloging form in Sinopia will have at least one field.

To add additional Property Templates to your Template (which you're going to have to do if you want your form to have more than one field!), click +Add another.

Below are instructions for configuring each Property Template.

Property

• Enter the property URI. The property URI you enter here will end up as the property of the RDF statement created by this field when the template is used for cataloging. So if you enter http://id.loc.gov/ontologies/bibframe/copyrightDate here, and the cataloger fills in this field with 2000, the resulting RDF statement will be <> http://id.loc.gov/ontologies/bibframe/copyrightDate "2000" . where <> is the URI Sinopia will mint for the "thing" that is cataloged.
• Sinopia does enforce that the value you enter here is a URI, but Sinopia doesn't enforce that it has to be a valid property for the Class you entered in the template metadata. You can use any property from any ontology. (In fact, Sinopia does not check that it's actually a property at all, just that it's a URI.)
• Property URI is required.
• Important limitation! You cannot have create more than one field in a template with the same property URI. A cataloger can repeat a field you set up--this is explained below, but you can only set up one field with a particular property. (See this page if you want to know more.) Sinopia does not enforce this limitation when you save your template, but the cataloger will get this error message when trying to use a template with more than one field with the same property URI:

Label

• Enter the field name that will appear when this template is used for cataloging.
• Label is required.

Remark

• Enter help text for this field.
• Remark is not required.
• Fields that have a remark will be displayed with an "i" icon next to the fieldname. The cataloger can click the "i" icon to see the Remark text. For example, the Name field here was configured with Remark = Enter name as last name, first name.

Remark URL

• If you want to provide a link to a webpage that will give guidance about filling in this field, use Remark URI instead of Remark.
• Remark URI is not required.
• Fields that have a Remark URI will be displayed with an "external link" icon next to the fieldname. The cataloger can click the "external link" icon to visit the Remark URI in their browser.

Property attributes

Every property has three attributes:

• required / optional
• repeatable / not repeatable
• ordered / not ordered

The default for a field is:

• optional
• not repeatable
• not ordered

So if you leave Property attributes alone, the resulting field will be optional (the cataloger will not be required to fill in the field before saving), not repeatable (the cataloger will be able to add only one value to this field), and not ordered (if the field is repeatable, the order of the values is not retained and is not significant).

Looking at each attribute in detail:

Required / optional

• If you want Sinopia to enforce that a field be filled in during cataloging, select the "required" attribute from the dropdown.
• The field will be displayed with an asterisk, and Sinopia will check that the field is filled in when the cataloger tries to save. In this example, the Name field is required, and if the cataloger tries to Save without filling it in, Sinopia gives an error message.

Repeatable / not repeatable

• If you want a cataloger to be able to enter more than one value in a field, select the "repeatable" attribute from the dropdown.

Ordered / not ordered

• For repeatable fields, if you want Sinopia to retain the order of the repeated values, select the "ordered" attribute from the dropdown.
• When the repeated values are saved, Sinopia will use the RDF "first" and "rest" syntax to order the entered values.
• Although this attribute is nonsensical for a non-repeatable field, it is possible to configure a field as both "non-repeatable" and "ordered" without getting an error.
• Note that there is currently not an easy way for te cataloger to re-order entered values.

Property type

• Sinopia supports several field types, and here's where you specify what type of field you want. In other words, what kind of object is expected by this property. The types are literal, nested resource, URI, and lookup.
• Property type is required.

Looking at each property type in detail:

Literal

• Select "literal" if you expect the cataloger to enter a literal value.

Nested resource

• Select "nested resource"

URI or Lookup

Literal attributes

URI attributes

Lookup attributes

Nested resource attributes