Pete,
In our modelling of services and collections we've found it convenient
to introduce the notion of an AccessPoint which represents some
abstraction of the means of access to a collection.
In our model we have:
Collection isAccessedVia AccessPoint
We then have two forms of AccessPoint: PhysicalAccessPoint and Service.
The PhysicalAccessPoint represents a place a person could visit to gain
access to the collection. A Service is an electronic system for
accessing descriptions of the items (and in some cases the items themselves)
We have found this to be a more useful abstraction than attempting to
model where collections are physically located or even where a service
is physically located. Knowing the location of an item in a collection
can be useful but knowing how to physically get hold of it is much more so.
Cheers,
Ian
|