On Tue, 12 Jun 2001, Diane I. Hillmann wrote:
> 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.
However, UB didn't even look at the IEEE elements, officially (of
course, we peeked...). It was out of our scope, and our Recommendation
makes no reference to them. By analogy, I should think we would not
officially care which elements of vCard were recommended, since we (as
the Usage Board) would not be adding our own Recommendation.
> >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.
In my interpretation, the DC-Ed recommendation as a whole was "The Dublin
Core (15) + new elements + IEEE elements" -- an Application Profile, in
our current jargon. UB only looked at the new elements and recommended
them. If we should be in the business of looking at the whole AP, then
we would need to rethink (and reword) our mission and scope.
> >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?
Hmm. You say yes, Andy says no... I think it would be nice if UB could
make some statement with regard to the MARC relator terms, but it is unclear
to me how best to do this.
> > > 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.
Jose may want to clarify, but I'm quite sure that is what some people
think is needed.
> >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?
I believe the fundamental issue is: to what class of objects does our
vocabulary refer? Is the term "resource" broad enough to cover
"people" ("agents")?
> >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.
Suggest a way. I'm game! (E.g., Would we review them one by one? Would
we create a super-element Agent to which they all would refer?)
Tom
_______________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Thomas Baker [log in to unmask]
GMD Library
Schloss Birlinghoven +49-2241-14-2352
53754 Sankt Augustin, Germany fax +49-2241-14-2619
|