info-tech-canon/infospace/assimilation/canon-federation/source/research/social-community-graphs/schema-org-person-organization-membership.md

Schema.org Person Organization Membership

Source Type

Semantic vocabulary. Schema.org types and properties for Person, Organization, membership, and role-like affiliations.

Domain

Structured data about people and organizations, SEO/social graphs, and membership representation on the web.

Why This Source Matters

Schema.org distinguishes persons, organizations, membership, employee roles, and affiliation properties — widely used for web-scale person/org modeling.

Key Concepts

• Person: living human; properties include name, email, identifier, sameAs, affiliation, worksFor, memberOf.
• Organization: business, club, or other collective; member, employee, department, subOrganization, parentOrganization.
• OrganizationRole: intermediate type linking person to organization with roleName, startDate, endDate.
• member / memberOf: reciprocal membership between Person and Organization.
• employee / worksFor: employment relationship properties.
• affiliation: organization a person is affiliated with (looser than member).
• sameAs: URL of related entity — often used for weak equivalence/synonymity.
• identifier: PropertyValue or Text for external IDs.
• SportsTeam / PerformingGroup: specialized Organization subtypes.
• ProgramMembership: membership in a program with tier/benefits.

Relevant Terminology

Term	Source meaning
Person	Human being in structured data.
Organization	Collective entity (company, club, NGO).
memberOf	Person belongs to Organization.
member	Organization has Person as member.
employee	Person employed by Organization.
worksFor	Inverse employment link.
affiliation	Looser org association for Person.
sameAs	Related/equivalent resource URL (weak linking).
OrganizationRole	Named role with temporal bounds.
subOrganization	Org hierarchy child.
identifier	External ID for entity.

Modeling Assumptions

• Person means human in schema.org intent.
• Membership and employment are properties, not reified relationship objects (except OrganizationRole).
• sameAs is informal equivalence between web resources, not verified identity.
• Organizations can nest via subOrganization/parentOrganization.
• Roles can be typed via OrganizationRole with dates.
• No authentication or authorization semantics.
• Properties are multi-valued; one person can have many memberships.

Identity-Canon Implications

• Schema.org Person maps to Natural Person.
• Organization maps to Organization collective actor.
• memberOf / member map to Membership Relationship.
• employee / worksFor map to Affiliation Relationship or employment specialization of Membership.
• affiliation maps to Affiliation Relationship (looser).
• OrganizationRole maps to Role relationship with temporal bounds.
• subOrganization maps to structural relationship between Organization actors (child/parent).
• sameAs maps to weak Synonymity Assertion between web resources — high conflation risk if treated as strong link.
• identifier maps to Identifier PropertyValue.
• Supports S03 (sub-orgs), S07 (informal groups as Organization subtypes), S08.

Terminology Conflicts

• Person vs. Profile: schema.org Person is often used for public profile page.
• member vs. employee: overlapping employment semantics; not always distinct.
• sameAs vs. Synonymity: sameAs is SEO linking, not identity proofing.
• Organization vs. Community: SportsTeam/PerformingGroup blur social vs. org.
• Role vs. OrganizationRole: roleName may be job title or permission label.

Candidate Canonical Mappings

Schema.org concept	Candidate canonical concept
Person	Natural Person
Organization	Organization
memberOf / member	Membership Relationship
employee / worksFor	Affiliation or employment Membership
affiliation	Affiliation Relationship
OrganizationRole	Role + Membership with temporal bounds
subOrganization	Organization hierarchy Relationship
sameAs	Weak Synonymity Assertion (caution)
identifier	Identifier
ProgramMembership	Membership Relationship (program scope)

Open Questions

• Should sameAs ever promote beyond weak Synonymity without additional evidence?
• Does OrganizationRole warrant a canonical temporal Relationship subtype?
• How should ProgramMembership map vs. Community membership?
• Should subOrganization be a distinct Relationship type or Organization attribute?

References

• Schema.org Person — https://schema.org/Person
• Schema.org Organization — https://schema.org/Organization
• Schema.org OrganizationRole — https://schema.org/OrganizationRole
• Schema.org sameAs — https://schema.org/sameAs