On Wed, 25 Sep 2002, Pete Johnston wrote:
> Is it implicit in the DC concept of element refinement that a refinement
> refines exactly one element?
I think it is - but I agree that this is probably not stated explicitly
anywhere :-(.
My personal view is that DCMI should do the following...
1) Make an explicit statement (somewhere, I'm not quite sure where) that a
DCMI element refinement is a sub-property of exactly one 'parent' DCMI
element or element refinement.
2) Acknowledge that dc:creator is 'by definition' an element refinement of
dc:contributor. I.e. it is always the case that 'An entity primarily
responsible for making the content of the resource' is also 'An entity
responsible for making contributions to the content of the resource'.
3) Carefully fit any newly proposed refinements for dc:creator and
dc:contributor directly under one or other (but not both) of those
elements. E.g. I would consider dcterms:editor as an element refinement
of dc:contributor, not dc:creator.
4) We could go further and say that all agent 'roles' that have to do with
contributing to the content of the resource become element refinements of
dc:contributor. I.e. that dc:creator becomes one of a potentially long
list of dc:contributor element refinements and simply sits alongside
things like dcterms:author and dcterms:illustrator.
Of course, the person that is the dcterms:editor may also be the
dc:publisher and the dc:creator, but that does not make that property a
sub-property of the other two.
Note that dcterms:editor, dcterms:illustrator and dcterms:author do NOT
exist yet!
Andy
--
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