There's another angle on this that may be helpful.
I am not sure if I can document this [blush], but we've said in the past
that it is fine for a community to overlay a more restrictive definition
for their community's rendition of DC.
Its fine for ITPC to say something like:
We adopt the well-established semantic categories put in place by DCMI.
The application of these semantics within the ITPC community are subject
to further constraints that derive from the business requirements
established in:
http://iptc.org/pdl.php?fn=DRAFT-NAR_1.0-spec-NMDF-BusReq_34.pdf
In accordance with these requirements, ITPC Best Practice
recommendations are to constrain elements in the following manner:
...
...
...
stu
-----Original Message-----
From: General DCMI discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Misha Wolf
Sent: Thursday, June 23, 2005 2:26 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Never mind the syntax, feel the semantics
I'll start by mentioning that I've put on a hard hat and a flame-
retardant cape, just in case I need them.
It's also worth reiterating Stu's mention of my long involvement with
DC. See, for example, RFC 2413 (Dublin Core Metadata for Resource
Discovery), dating from 1998:
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2413.txt
As I've mentioned in previous postings, the News Architecture Working
Party of the International Press Telecommunications Council
(IPTC) is actively examining the use of DC for those of our metadata
elements where there is a good semantic fit. Having been involved with
DC all those years ago, I had assumed that this would be a relatively
pain-free matter. I was wrong. Consider the humble title. RFC 2413
defines this as:
The name given to the resource, usually by the Creator or
Publisher.
The current official DC documentation states:
Definition: A name given to the resource.
Comment : Typically, Title will be a name by which the resource
is formally known.
Ouch! This comment may well work for the Library community. It
certainly does not work for many other communities, such as Web page
authors, professional photographers, or news organisations.
If I change the title of one of the hundreds of Web pages I maintain, I
am most certainly not changing "a name by which the resource is formally
known".
The same applies to a professional photographer changing the title of
one of thousands of photos on her/his computer.
And the same applies to a news story ... the title (ie headline) is most
certainly not any kind of formal name.
So we have a problem. If the Semantic Web is to work, it is not enough
to employ some common syntax or even a common abstract model.
We need to be able to share meaning. And this is obviously a balancing
act between having definitions that are so broad that they become
meaningless and definitions that are so narrow that they fit only one
community and are not shareable. Those of us working on the
architecture of mainstream news standards, perceive the comment
associated with dc:title as being on the latter end of the spectrum.
And so, as Chair of the IPTC News Metadata Framework WG, I am asking the
DC community to reconsider the text of the comment accompanying the
definition of dc:title.
Many thanks,
Misha Wolf
Standards Manager, Reuters
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