I am going to begin the element by element discussion of the application
profile. We have discussed Title quite a bit at the two previous
meetings. Creator, Contributor, and Publisher are being discussed by the
Agent Working Group and we will be bound by decisions made by the Usage
Board once that group has submitted something. I think to make progress
now we should skip those elements.

So the next one is Subject. Below is how the current draft of the
DC-Lib-AP reads. There are currently two tables, one for Subject the
element itself and one for Subject encoding schemes as a whole. There are
none for qualified subject. Under each I pose some questions for
discussion.

Subject Table 1:
Name                       Subject
Label                      Subject
Choice of Namespace        DCMES version 1.1
DC Refinement(s)
DC-Lib Refinement(s)       see below
DC Encoding Scheme(s)      see below
DC-Lib Encoding Scheme(s)  see below
Form of Obligation         MA
DC Definition              The topic of the content of the resource.
DC Comment                 Typically, a Subject will be expressed as
                           keywords, key phrases or classification
                           codes that describe a topic of the resource.
                           Recommended best practice is to select a
                           value from a controlled vocabulary or formal
                           classification scheme.
DC-Lib Definition          -
DC-Lib Comment             If a geographic aspect is recorded use the
                           element Coverage.
Best practice              It is highly recommended that either
                           freetext or controlled vocabulary be included
                           in the metadata where appropriate and
                           feasible. It is also recommended that a
                           controlled vocabulary be used with encoding scheme
                           specified.
Open questions             May Subject element be used in a unqualified
                           form?
                           Is there any use for qualifiers Keyword and
                           Classification, or can this distinction be
                           inferred by the use of an encoding scheme?

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Questions:
1. Is an unqualified Subject allowed? I think previous discussion about
this in general is that we have to allow for unqualified DC and that all
we can do is recommend that an encoding scheme be used. Is there agreement
on that?

2. We have discussed the second question about qualifiers Keyword and
Classification. Note that the Government Application Profile, which was
submitted to the Usage Board and discussed at DC-9 had similar elements
(with different names): Subject.category (corresponds to classification
more or less) and Subject.keyword. The Usage Board's response was a
request for clarification for the Keyword element and a justification for
its need. No recommendation was issued on category.
It would be useful to liaison with the Government WG if we think this is
needed. But let's discuss our current thinking (discussion at IFLA
indicated that these qualifiers are not needed since it can be determined
by the use of an encoding scheme).

3. Otherwise, is there anything else in the above that we are not all in
agreement about?

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Subject Table 2.

Name                       Subject & DC encoding scheme(s)
Label                      ...
Choice of Namespace        DCMES Qualifiers (2000-07-11)
DC Refinement(s)
DC-Lib Refinement(s)       see above
DC Encoding Scheme(s)      LCSH, MeSH, DDC, LCC, UDC
DC-Lib Encoding Scheme(s)  see below
Form of Obligation         MA
DC Definition
DC Comment
DC-Lib Definition
DC-Lib Comment
Best practice              Always use the encoding scheme(s) for terms
                           from a controlled vocabulary.
Open questions             Do we want to include an additional
                           qualifier (identifier) to link to a registry
                           where all encoding schemes are defined in a special
                           schema (e.g. based on RSLP schema?).
                           NKOS will probably develop such a schema.

                           NOTE: Additional encoding schemes will be
                           registered for those used in the library
                           domain (probably all those registered in the
                           MARC list of subject and classification
                           schemes as well as others that are identified).

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1. I think I need an elaboration about the first question and what is
intended. I would think that we would register encoding schemes using the
DCMI mechanism so that this would not be needed. As I recall the
participants at the University of Goettingen submitted this question.

2. We should look at all those encoding schemes in the MARC list and see
whether we want all of them registered or pick out those we want
registered. Alternatively if the answer to the first question is yes, we
want an identifier to link to a registry, then perhaps we want to link
both to the NKOS and to MARC to provide this.

3. Do we agree with the rest? Note that this table is intended to cover
all encoding schemes so that we don't have to have a separate table for
each.

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Further comments about Subject are welcome.

I would like to discuss this for the next week: deadline for comments 6
December.

I may send out another message about the next element, since we may need
to do more than one a week to make progress.

Rebecca