Setting Up Templates

New: video on creating templates

In addition to the documentation on this site, a video tutorial from the 2021 LD4 Conference goes over creating templates in Sinopia: How to use Sinopia to create ANY kind of linked data

Why does Sinopia need templates?

Sinopia is a form-based cataloging tool. To catalog something (a “resource”)--to create RDF statements about a resource--a Sinopia user will fill in a form. Sinopia can have many different forms, since cataloging requirements will vary for different formats, standards, and communities.

The “recipe” Sinopia uses to create a form is called a resource template, or simply a template. Just like a cooking recipe specifies which ingredients to use and how to combine them, a Sinopia template specifies which fields to display and what RDF statements to create from data entered in those fields. Another way to think of a template is that a template is an application profile. Here's a nice definition of application profile courtesy of DCMI: "Application profiles provide the rules that govern the creation and reuse of metadata instances."

(In fact, Sinopia has a "root template", which is the "recipe" for templates themselves. This recipe can't be edited and is not visible.)

Who is this "Setting Up Templates" documentation for?

Sinopia already has some templates for your use, so it’s entirely possible and reasonable to catalog in Sinopia and not need to create or change any templates. Go to the Resource Templates tab to see the available templates and start cataloging!

This documentation is for those who want to make new templates (forms), and for those who need to make changes to existing templates. Again, to fill in a form (to catalog something), you do not need these instructions. Instead, you might like to follow the PCC Sinopia Training Modules, which, although targeted towards users from the PCC (Program for Cooperative Cataloging) community, have lots of tips on how to use Sinopia for cataloging.

This documentation on Setting Up Templates assumes that you know how to navigate through Sinopia and fill in the different kinds of fields Sinopia has. If you need help with these tasks, see the PCC Sinopia Training Modules. This documentation about templates uses the role "catalogers" to talk about the user who will create a description in Sinopia based on a template, but you could substitute any user who will use Sinopia to create linked data.

What’s documented here

• From template to RDF: how do templates work?
• A simple example template
• Creating a new template
• Template metadata
• Property Templates: Types of fields and options for each *Copying a template to use as a starting point
• Editing an existing template and a note about deleting templates
• Working with templates outside of Sinopia

What's missing?

To see known issues and feature requests related to template configuration, visit the Backlog, Template config column.