Just to return to the very practical questions raised by Andy:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2=ind0301&L=dc-architecture&T=
0&F=&S=&P=3032
Seems to me all three of Andy's suggested statements are "correct".
Leaving aside the "DCMI namespace" (1) v "XML Namespace" (2) distinction
(if it exists!), I definitely do want to distinguish
- a set of terms or names (1 or 2) identified by a URI e.g.
http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/
- a particular representation of that set of terms (e.g. an RDF/XML
document) which happens to be Web retrievable using that same URI (3)
In the schema I get at the moment from http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/
, I see:
<rdf:Description rdf:about="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
<dc:title xml:lang="en-US">The Dublin Core Element Set v1.1 namespace
providing access to it's content by means of an RDF Schema</dc:title>
<dc:publisher xml:lang="en-US">The Dublin Core Metadata
Initiative</dc:publisher>
<dc:description xml:lang="en-US"> The Dublin Core Element Set v1.1
namespace provides URIs for the Dublin Core Elements v1.1. Entries are
declared using RDF Schema language to support RDF applications.
</dc:description>
<dc:language xml:lang="en-US">English</dc:language>
<dcterms:issued>1999-07-02</dcterms:issued>
<dcterms:modified>2002-05-22</dcterms:modified>
<dc:source rdf:resource="http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/"/>
<dc:source rdf:resource="http://dublincore.org/usage/decisions/"/>
<dcterms:isReferencedBy
rdf:resource="http://www.dublincore.org/documents/2001/10/26/dcmi-namesp
ace/"/>
<dcterms:isRequiredBy rdf:resource="http://purl.org/dc/terms/"/>
<dcterms:isReferencedBy rdf:resource="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/"/>
</rdf:Description>
The content of that title literal is so wonderfully "slippery", and
reading it still leaves me asking myself whether the resource described
is "the Dublin Core Element Set v1.1 namespace" or the RDFS/XML
representation. Given the absence of, e.g., a dc:format property, I
think it's the former but I'm not completely sure.
I guess one way of making the distinction is, when talking about the
representation, to use reification to describe statements within the
document instead of just referring to the document as a whole?
Pete
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