Hello Jane,
Jane Read wrote:
> Huh? Sorry, maybe I misread your email, but you can't have an *optional*
> authority. You're either following an authority list or you aren't -
> there is no middle course.
>
Well, those are two options, therefore the authority is optional. (It just
depends on what stage of the process of using a metadata schema you are
talking about: creating the application profile or filling in the records.)
> I don't actually understand the purpose of 9.4 Keyword. If the taxon
> goes in 9.2.2, why bother putting 9.4 in at all?
I guess the assumption was that the taxonpath would be used as a browse tree
and the keywords used to aid searching (and association between resources at
the ends of the browse tree--e.g. a "find similar resources by keyword"
function). As Sarah suggested a while back, it may be over-fiddly to separate
the two, which is one of the reasons why I agree with Scott that it would be a
good idea to get some use cases for sourced keywords--perhaps 9.2 is all we need?
> I suppose you could put
> alternative words which aren't used in that vocabulary ('non-preferred
> terms' is the technical librarianic word for these) in 9.4,
Nah, like you say below, that really is something best done on the repository
/ portal side.
Phil.
> but it's a
> lot of extra work adding them to each individual record. If you want to
> have an index with cross-references or allow searching on synonyms of
> controlled terms it would make more sense to hold the information in a
> separate file (library systems call these 'authority files'). Of course,
> that means when someone else harvests your records they won't get the
> cross-reference information, but is their happiness really worth the
> extra effort of typing the information in over and over again? If you've
> told them where you got the classification from they can replicate it
> themselves anyway.
>
> Jane
>
--
Phil Barker Learning Technology Adviser
ICBL, School of Mathematics and Computer Science
Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, EH14 4AS
Tel: work - 0131 451 3278 home - 0131 221 1352
Web: http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/~philb/
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