Thanks Ann - your example shows that the best way of dealing with this (as
in so many enrichments of Dublin Core) are by means of local extensions,
which could be formalised into application profiles.
The only reason I suggested dc:description was because Berthold's precise
question was how to specify frequency in DC, and I don't think there's
anywhere else in the current version of DC to refer to frequency other than
Description - at least not without using local extensions as you've done.
You are right to point out that the controlled values for dc:type are still
limited, and don't include anything that would allow you to identify a
journal beyond, say, "dc:type=text". And even if there was a dc:type=serial
or dc:type=journal, how would you indicate the frequency in DC? (Using
.frequency as a qualifier would break the dumb-down rule.)
As you say, a library catalogue system would capture things like frequency,
but I am very nervous about trying to make DC do the same job as a library
catalogue system. In Carl Lagoze's excellent article (which he circulated
in draft form in June but has now been formally published in D-Lib -
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january01/lagoze/01lagoze.html), "[the] push for
greater complexity was motivated by a desire for a record format that could
describe resources in the sort of detail found in a typical bibliographic
database or library catalog", but "efforts to introduce complexity into
Dublin Core are misguided. An attempt to intermix simplicity and
complexity, and the data models most appropriate for them, defeats the
equally noble goals of cross-domain description and extensive resource
description." Adding more complex modules (e.g. via application profiles)
is more appropriate than shoe-horning complexity into DC itself - if DC
becomes a complex model, it loses its raison d'etre.
I agree with you that we were rather stuck with the term "citation", so we
are constantly having to explain that what we mean by it (the bibliographic
record) is not the same as what, say, CrossRef means by it (an item in a
reference list).
The other aim we had was to come up with a *single* placeholder for this
bibliographic record - other metadata about an article can be found in
dc:creator, dc:date etc., but we wanted one place where you could pull out
the record as "Jnl, Vol, Issue, pages".
Should this discussion be moved to dc-citation rather than dc-general?
Cliff
Ann Apps <[log in to unmask]>@JISCMAIL.AC.UK> on 22/01/2001 10:22:10
Please respond to Ann Apps <[log in to unmask]>
Sent by: The broadest of mailing lists related to the international Dublin
Core effo <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
cc:
Subject: Re: Frequency of a resource
Berthold Weiss <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> For describing journals with DC we need the possibility to express the
> frequency of a resource (e.g. a journal is published monthly). Any
> ideas how to specify this in DC?
>
I've included the frequency as an optional field in a local
specialisation of Date, along with the date of publication. So, where
my local namespace is 'myns', and using an XML syntax, I could
have:
<dc:date>
<myns:date Qualifier="Available" Scheme="W3CDTF">2001-01-
01</myns:date>
<myns:frequency>weekly</myns:frequency>
</dc:date>
Karen Coyle <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> This is definitely a needed element on any metadata that >
describes a
> non-monographic publication. It seems to me that it fits into the
> TYPE
> element, which is where you would state that the item is a serial.
Using a local specialisation of Type is obviously another option.
But currently the allowed DC values for Type are very minimal, and
decisions have not yet been made on an extended DC list.
Although 'frequency' may not be a 'core' discovery item, I could
envisage people using it in a search when they were unsure of the
exact title of a serial, but knew a word for the title and its
frequency. A library catalogue system needs to capture all the
information it has available and in such a way that is is reusable for
future applications, so I don't think information about a resource
should be lost or 'hidden' inside the Description bucket.
Questions like this indicate a need for a Citation Profile to provide
guidance on how to record all fields of a bibliographic record, rather
than many people trying to solve the same problem independently.
[Actually I think 'citiation' was probably an unfortunate choice of
name for this application type because it tends to imply citation /
reference linking. We are really looking at the full bibliograhic
record for a resource.]
Best wishes,
Ann
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Email: [log in to unmask] WWW: http://epub.mimas.ac.uk/ann.html
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