Ann raises an important point that applies to ALL externally specified
schemes, whether they are encoding schemes (like URI schemes) or controlled
vocabulary schemes (like thesauri or classification schemes).
DCMI is not in the business of endorsing such schemes, but certainly
provides the means to make it easier for communities to use such schemes.
Thus it is in the interest of the larger community that such schemes be
registered, so that, within DC metadata, there are no scheme-name
collisions.
At the first meeting of the newly constituted Usage Board, it was agreed
that DCMI would register schemes as they came to our attention, and assign
tokens to them so that specifying such schemes would be unambiguous. Thus,
LCSH might be expected to be associated with the Library of COngress Subject
Headings, DOI with Document Object Identifier, DDC with Dewey Decimal
Classification, etc.
Once again, the purpose here is NOT to recommend, but rather to assure that
no name collisions will occur. As the DCMI registry work progresses, it
should be easy to search for such scheme names and thus schema designers
could identify which ones are in use, and also what might need to be added.
Note that in at least one case DCMI DOES recommend a scheme: W3C-DTF. This
is the time and date profile of ISO 8601 that is in common use for the
expression of time and date information on the web.
So, in the case of identifiers, the result should be an open ended list that
contains identifier scheme names, and the associated tokens in use by DCMI.
stu
-----Original Message-----
From: Ann Apps [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, August 20, 2001 8:09 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Encoding schemes for resource identifier
Dear All,
Currently the only endorsed encoding scheme for dc:identifier is
'URI', and also for dc:relation and dc:source. It seems to me that
you should be able to use other global standard identifiers as
encoding schemes for these elements.
Within the bibliographic citation area it seems natural to use
identifiers like ISSN, DOI, SICI, OpenURL (possibly DOI is a URI?).
In fact, people are already using these even though they are not
endorsed by DCMI.
I am sending this to dc-general, because I'm not sure which
working group would consider it. It may fall into the domain of dc-
citation. But I suspect there are other global identifiers in other
domains.
Interestingly, DOI and ISBN are given as examples of identifiers in
the definition of dc:identifier in the DCMES, but are not given as
qualifer encoding schemes.
Should there be a list of recommended global standard encoding
schemes, or should there be a more generic endorsement of any
global standard? Having a fixed list means it will need extension
when other standards are developed.
Best wishes,
Ann
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Mrs. Ann Apps. Senior Analyst - Research & Development, MIMAS,
University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 161 275 6039 Fax: +44 (0) 0161 275 6040
Email: [log in to unmask] WWW: http://epub.mimas.ac.uk/ann.html
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