Hi,

Reading through Pete's notes, I doubt that there needs to be a
distinction between location and service in DC CD AP. This is not to say
that there isn't a distinction to be made between the physical location
and administration of a collection and of the service used to access it.
However, the examples in the notes seem to be blurring the two concepts.
I'm arguing that, in the context of DC CD AP, it's really only the
access service that is of interest.   

Libraries, museums and archival repositories are given as examples of a
location, but I think these are mainly included here because of their
role in making the collection accessible to users.  Lending services
provided by a library or visiting facilities provided by a museum are
given as examples of a service, and I think this is what is implied when
we move from location information in union catalogues to entries in
directories of libraries, museums or archives. These give their contact
details, hours of access, classes of permitted user, etc. - i.e.,
details about their services to users and how to access them.    

Pete can't imagine a distinct representation of a location for a digital
collection and nor can I if location implies access.  A digital
collection can have a physical location where the collection is
archived, separate from the URL used to access it.  Similarly, a
physical collection can be held at a separate physical location to its
access service.  But I don't think these distinctions are of primary
interest to the DC CD AP.  

The test would be whether records describing a physical collection could
be demonstrated to need both "is located at" and "is available through"
to be complete - not forgetting the need to have separate records for
collections and catalogues describing them.

After struggling with this issue for physical items, the DC-Library AP
ended up borrowing Location from MODS to provide an identifier for local
library holdings. Again, here, location implies service - it "identifies
the organization holding the resource or from which access is obtained".
The downside is that implementers are directed to use location for "a
physical location that allows the user to retrieve the item when a URI
is not appropriate (e.g. for physical items not available
electronically)." I presume that this means that in simple DC the link
to location-service information is lost.  

I see that the same issue shouldn't apply to DC CD AP, where it is
planned to store the "Is Available At" information as a refinement of
Relation. In practice, though, I wonder how often identifier and
relation URIs will resolve to the same place, or whether that matters.

Judith Pearce
Director, Business Analysis
National Library of Australia
Phone: +61 2 62621425
Fax: +61 2 6273 3648
Email: [log in to unmask] 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: DCMI Collection Description Group
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Pete Johnston
Sent: Saturday, 2 October 2004 8:45 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Collections, Locations and Services revisited


FYI...

http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0409&L=dc-government&T=
0&P=626

http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0410&L=dc-government&T=
0&P=58

http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0410&L=dc-government&T=
0&P=152

Pete