Dear Colleagues,
Apologies for multiple copies.
This draft document is one of two proposals answering the third milestone
defined for the Agents Working Group at the DC 2001 conference [1] and
referred to in Rebecca's earlier email.
Milestone: Develop a list of CCP (Creator / Contributor / Publisher)
qualifiers
Description: Develop a list of CCP (Creator / Contributor / Publisher)
qualifiers. This would likely use the MARC relator codes as a point of
departure, and define such things as agent refinements, classes, types and
roles
Introduction
This proposal has been discussed on the DC Libraries Application Profile
list but is not intended solely for that domain. Comment is invited from
other domains.
As a result of discussion it was decided to separate the issue of agent
Roles from other agent-related data and offer two proposals. One will
describe a means of recording a Role for an agent and another will suggest a
means to encompass other information about the resource that is also related
to the agent. This document is the second of these and describes a Dublin
Core Structured Value (DCSV) [2] for use as an encoding scheme with the
Creator, Contributor or Publisher elements.
It should be noted that unlike previous agent proposals, this DCSV is NOT an
attempt to describe the agent - that work is being progressed elsewhere in
the Agents Working Group. This DCSV aims to enhance resource discovery in
two ways: by adding further markup and therefore specificity to CCP values
(e.g. parts of names); by including further agent-related information about
the resource (e.g. affiliation at the time the resource was created).
Previous discussion of agent information had identified four Types of Agent:
personal, corporate, instrument (variously called entity, service, automata)
and event. Although each of these was assumed to have different components,
further consideration indicated that, given some latitude in the
definitions, the same group of components could serve for all types. All
the components in the DCSV are optional and those not relevant to any
particular type of agent can be ignored.
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Proposed DCMI Agent Detail Encoding Scheme
The proposal requires a new encoding scheme, DCMI Agent Detail, which
follows the Dublin Core Structured Value syntax [2] for encoding a list of
labelled values within a text string. The Dublin Core Structured Value
definition has the status of a DCMI recommendation.
All components are optional. Different domains are free to specify which
components are desirable for the types of agent identified as valuable
within that domain. For example, the Library Application Profile would
provide guidance as to which components to use for agents appropriate to
library resources. Examples are given after the description of the
components.
DCMI Agent Detail
Name: DCMIAgentDetail
Label: DCMI Agent Detail
Definition: DCMI Agent Detail contains additional information about the
agent in its capacity as Creator, Contributor or Publisher of the resource
being described. It is not intended to describe the agent.
The proposed labels which may be encoded within DCMI Agent Detail are:
Family Name
Label: familyName
Definition: The family name or surname of the agent.
Note: Components for parts of names are given to avoid dependence on
parsing the value based on punctuation and the difficulties that can arise
due to different cultural norms. Specific markup of values gives greater
flexibility to users of the data for filing uses and enhanced resource
discovery.
Given Names
Label: givenNames
Definition: The personal name or names of the agent.
Name
Label: name
Definition: The full name of the agent, personal, corporate or of another
type, expressed in the manner recommended by any particular domain.
Note: An undifferentiated name component is included to accommodate names
that do not require the family name/given name sub-elements or applications
that choose not to use the sub-elements. In the latter case different
domains are free to specify their own guidance as to how the value should
be entered.
Affiliation Location
Label: affiliationLocation
Definition: The affiliation or location of the agent at the time they made
their contribution to the described resource. This can be the name of an
institution in the case of a personal agent or an address or geographic
name in the case of a publisher or corporate agent.
Note: It is not envisaged that this would be updated, the rationale being
that e.g. the affiliation of the author at the time of the creation of the
resource is an attribute of some significance to the resource and remains
the same for the resource even if the agent subsequently moves on.
Description
Label: description
Definition: To specify the type or nature of the agent. For example to
specify an event or instrument/automata/service. (See examples)
Date Time
Label: dateTime
Definition: The date and time at which the agent executed its role in the
life of the resource.
Note: This is regarded as important for event-type agents where the date
the agent executed the given role may differ from the date the resource was
created or issued.
Identifier
Label: identifier
Definition: An identifier for the agent.
Note: This component is included to allow for the inclusion of an agent
identifier and/or to enable linking to another record describing the agent
held separately from the record for the resource.
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Role was considered as a component of the DCSV. A separate proposal is
being submitted to include role values as element refinements for the Agent
elements. This approach will be re-evaluated if necessary.
Jurisdiction has been proposed as an additional component of the DCSV. The
following definition is put forward here for discussion and clarification.
Label: jurisdiction
Definition: The local, provincial, regional, national or supranational
authority to which a corporate body belongs.
Note: For example, Jurisdiction may be "Australia" when Name is "Department
of Finance and Administration".
DCSV Examples
These examples assume that Role values have been approved as CCP element
refinements. Encoding schemes for the Identifier component within the DCSV
are shown using the namespace convention which may or may not be an
acceptable usage within a component. Line breaks are for the sake of
clarity only.
Example 1 (HTML). Showing a person as creator, an organisation as sponsor
and a publisher.
<meta name="DC.Creator.author"
scheme="DCMIAgentDetail"
content="familyName=Clayphan;
givenName=Robina;
affiliationLocation=The British Library;
identifier=AAAA:xxxx">
<meta name="DC.Contributor.sponsor"
scheme="DCMIAgentDetail"
content="name=Some Organisation;
affiliationLocation=London, England;
identifier=BBBB:yyyy">
<meta name="DC.Publisher" scheme="DCMIAgentDetail"
content="name=Some Publisher;
affiliationLocation=London, England;
identifier=CCCC:zzzz">
The following examples are guesses at how other domains would use the DCSV
for the types of agent that have been mentioned in past discussions -
principally the instrument/automata/service agent and event agent, which
equates to conferences in current library usage. Role qualifiers have not
been entered in either example. Guidance and examples are sought from other
domains.
Example 2: showing an instrument/automata/service agent.
(This is for a sound recording of a steam engine.)
<meta name="dc:Contributor"
scheme="DCMIAgentDetail"
content="name=The Flying Scotsman;
description=Steam Engine;
identifier=GNER:4472">
Example 3: showing an event agent as contributor.
<meta name="dc:Contributor"
scheme="DCMIAgentDetail"
content="name=Glastonbury Festival 2000;
affiliationLocation=Glastonbury, UK;
description=Music and performing arts festival;
dateTime=2000-06">
Regards,
Robina Clayphan
1 http://dublincore.org/groups/agents/
2 http://dublincore.org/documents/2000/07/28/dcmi-dcsv/
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Robina Clayphan, Metadata Development Analyst,
National Bibliographic service, The British Library
Tel: +44 (0)1937 546969
Fax: +44 (0)1937 546586
email: [log in to unmask]
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