Here's another rationale for repeating DC elements
From the Government of Canada metadata guidance
http://www.cio-dpi.gc.ca/clf-upe/6/meta_e.asp
If an information resource is bilingual with titles in English and French,
repeat the Title element to facilitate sorting titles in search results.
Nancy
Nancy Brodie
613.946.5039 | [log in to unmask]
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Information Management Division, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat
Division de la Gestion de l'information, Secrétariat du Conseil du Trésor du
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-----Original Message-----
From: Clayphan, Robina [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: September 13, 2001 5:24 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Repeating DC elements
Hi,
I have been asked for the rationale for repeating a DC element
rather than
putting multiple values in one occurence of an element. This is not
something I have thought about in terms of stating a general
principle and
cannot find any specific information.
My thoughts are: firstly you would repeat an element if you wanted
to enter
values of different types i.e. qualify the element with a scheme.
For
example - DC.Subject expressed as LCSH and a repeat for DDC. If
the value
of DC.Subject were simply going to be several keywords then repeats
would be
superfluous and all the words could go in one instance of the
element.
A second reason for using repeats could be where the values of an
element
need to be clearly differentiated because they refer to entities
that are
different in their own right - e.g. several Creators.
Finally, there may well be implementation specific reasons - for
example the
data structures in a source database that is being used to generate
DC may
lend themsleves to repeats rather than concatenation of values.
This could
also apply in reverse if the DC metadata was being designed with a
view to
conversion to another metadata format.
In terms of general principles that is as far as I have got. I'd be
grateful
for any insights anyone else may have.
Thanks,
Robina
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Robina Clayphan
National Bibliographic Service
The British Library
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