At 09:11 AM 6/12/2001 +0200, you wrote:
>On Mon, 11 Jun 2001, Andy Powell wrote:
> > > In what form would such recommendations come before the Usage Board, if
> > > at all? Because of our grammar, we cannot simply create a qualifier
> > > pointing to MARC relators the way we point to LC Subject Headings. And
> > > if the Agent WG recommended, say, vCard, should the Usage Board have
> > > any role in ratifying that recommendation?
> >
Some of this depends, it seems to me, on what part of vCard they were
recommending. The whole thing? Just certain elements? I should think we'd
still want examine any kind of recommendation for how it would fit.
> > They wouldn't come to the usage board at all. vCard elements are similar
> > to the IEEE elements used in the DC-Education recommendation. They would
> > not need ratifying by us - it would be inappropriate.
But nobody suggested that we use ALL the IEEE elements. I think that's
critical.
>I agree with this. But what if they were to recommend vCard plus two new
>elements? Would those two new elements come before the Usage Board? What if
>those two elements seemed to be outside the scope of the Dublin Core?
Isn't that sort of what DC-Ed just did? Except it wasn't vCard plus two
new elements, it was a couple of IEEE elements and two new elements.
> > The MARC relator codes are, in effect, element qualifiers taken from a
> > non-DC namespace - as with any element qualifier they are simply new
> > elements that happen to be refinements of one or more DCMES elements.
> > Again, we shouldn't be in the business of ratifying these things - though
> > we could make statements of the form "MARC relator X refines DCMES element
> > Y" ?
I agree. This is how we should be thinking of our role.
>I should think that those statements would most properly be made in the
>namespace of the MARC relator terms (Library of Congress). But the
>possibility you raise is also interesting: should we be in the business
>of ratifying statements about the relationship of terms in other
>namespaces to terms in our own?
This first statement makes about as much sense as DCMI telling MARC how to
handle names from DC records. And we'd only be making statements about the
usefulness of the relator terms (or anybody else's terms) in reference to
our view of the world, not about how they might use the same terms. I
think that's legit for us to do. If not us, who?
> > OK, I stand corrected (though I don't say I'm overly in favour of such a
> > wide mission). What I should have said was, it seems inappropriate, to
> > me, for DCMI to expend effort developing a core standard for describing
> > people.
> >
It gives me the willies, too, when stated in quite that way. I hope that's
not what they'll be doing.
>I think we can clarify our own scope and role as a group without
>constraining what working groups decide is important to do.
Heck, what fun is that?
>We still need to decide, as a group, whether elements (and related
>qualifiers or controlled vocabularies) descriptive of agents fall into
>the scope of Usage Board -- irrespective of whether those elements form
>a complete "core element set" for agents.
Again, if not us, then who? Do we want to go back to the formative chaos
of DC?
>Then we need to decide whether the UB would review or ratify
>statements, for example, to the effect that MARC relator terms are
>sub-properties of CCP elements.
I think we should wade in and as the saying goes, "just do it." Otherwise
we'll be condemned to flailing around for X additional years, waiting for
someone to make up the rules.
Diane
(Playing the cranky dominatrix today)
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