All,

I've posted some notes on the Collection/Location/Service question at

http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/dcmi/collection-model/

I've started from (a subset of) the Heaney model [1] and tried to add in
the Service entity type. But I'm not sure I've managed to do much more
than restate the problems we already identified:

- for physical collections, I can see it is possible to distinguish
between location and service

- for digital collections (indeed digital resources more generally), I
struggle to distinguish between a location and a service

- I'm not sure this can be generalised to all resource types. Maybe
that's OK? After all, the dc:format property isn't applicable to the
descripton of an Event or an Agent. But if there are limitations I think
we have to be clear what they are.

- if this is applied to digital Items, I'm not sure (particularly after
re-reading (bits of!) this [2] thread) how well that fits with the REST
approach to Web Architecture. i.e. if the identifier of a resource may
be de-referenced to obtain a representation of the resource, then the
requesting application never has to concern itself with "locations".
(Though it does need to know what service to use to de-reference the
identifier..?)

I'm kinda concerned about how to make sense of this in a way which will
make the basis of a coherent proposal to the Usage Board, so any inputs
much appreciated!

Pete

-------
Pete Johnston
Research Officer (Interoperability)
UKOLN, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, UK
tel: +44 (0)1225 383619    fax: +44 (0)1225 386838
mailto:[log in to unmask]
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ukoln/staff/p.johnston/

[1] http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/rslp/model/
[2]
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-interest/2004Jan/0171.html