4.1 technical.format is currently mandatory in the UK LOM Core.
In the RDN/LTSN partnership work there has been some discussion about the
benefits of using technical.format vs. the cost of getting cataloguers to
populate the field correctly.
Most real-world resources (even Web pages) are made up of multiple
objects, each having a different MIME type - therefore populating this
field correctly is likely to be difficult in practice. Note: it might be
possible to automatically populate this field - but, if so, it's not clear
to me why one would want to automatically populate the field at the time
the resource is catalogued, as opposed to at some later point downstream,
e.g. when the metadata is indexed or when resource is accessed.
Additionally, it is not clear what end-user functional requirement is
being met by populating the field.
In practice, the more generalised information found in 4.6
technical.otherPlatformRequirements is likely to be more useful to the
end-user when discovering/selecting a resource. (For example - "I don't
care whether the Web page contains GIF or JPEG images - all I want to know
is whether I need anything more than my Web browser to use the resource").
In maintaining/developing the RDN/LTSN LOM Application Profile I would
like to consider making 4.1 technical.format optional - however, I can't
currently do that and remain compliant with the UK LOM Core.
On balance, I wonder if making 4.1 technical.format mandatory and 4.6
technical.otherPlatformRequirements optional is the right way round? I'd
appreciate other people's views on this - but would ultimately like to
suggest that technical.format is made optional in UK LOM Core.
Comments?
Andy
--
Distributed Systems, UKOLN, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY, UK
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ukoln/staff/a.powell +44 1225 383933
Resource Discovery Network http://www.rdn.ac.uk/
ECDL 2004, Bath, UK - 12-17 Sept 2004 - http://www.ecdl2004.org/
|