Apologies for the delay in forwarding this on to the Task Group and 
Collections Community - here is the Usage Board's review of the DC 
Collections AP.

Sarah

>Title:        DCMI Usage Board Review of Collections Application Profile
>Date:         2007-07-20
>Description:  This document is the result of a March 2007 review by the
>               DCMI Usage Board of the "Dublin Core Collections
>               Application Profile".
>
>About the profile
>
>The Collections Application Profile [1] was developed in
>order to provide a method for describing "collections" --
>both collections of resources, and catalogues of collections of
>resources (in essence a specialised form of "collection") --
>which conforms to the DCMI Abstract Model [2]. The Collections
>Application Profile defines collection as "any aggregation of
>physical and/or digital resources". Examples of collections
>include aggregations of natural (i.e. physical) objects,
>created objects, "born-digital" items, and digital surrogates
>of physical items. The Collections Application Profile is
>not intended to describe every possible characteristic of
>resource collections, as its primary purpose is discovery.
>
>The simple descriptions provided for in the Collections
>Application Profile are suitable for describing many different
>types of collections. Descriptions using this Application
>Profile are primarily designed to support:
>
>  * discovery of collections;
>  * identification of collections;
>  * selection of collections;
>  * identification of collection locations;
>  * identification of services providing access to collections.
>
>The domain model used in the Collections Application
>Profile is based on "An analytical model of collections and
>their catalogues" by Michael Heaney [9].   This analytical
>model focuses on Collections.  Collections hold Items, are
>described by Catalogues or Indexes, are located in Locations
>and accessed via Services, and are owned or collected by
>Owners who provide Services.
>
>Descriptions of Collections specify the nature of a collection,
>its name, size, language, topic, intended audience, and scope,
>as well as the methods and policies by which items are added
>to the collection.  In addition, descriptions indicate the
>Collector and Owner of the collection, point to the location
>where the collection is held and services which provide access,
>and note any related collections, catalogues, or publications.
>
>In order to do this, the Collections Application Profile uses
>DCMI terms along with more specialized terms created for use
>in the profile [3].  Controlled vocabularies of values were
>created for use in this profile: the Dublin Core Collection
>Description Type Vocabulary [4], an Accrual Method Vocabulary
>[5], an Accrual Policy Vocabulary [6], and a Frequency
>Vocabulary [7].  A summary of terms and constraints used in
>the profile was compiled into a tabular list [8].
>
>Building on prior work of the UKOLN Collection Description
>Focus [11] on the Resource Support Libraries Programme [12]
>(see also [13]), the DCMI Collection Description Working
>Group began in 2002 [10].  The initial development of the
>Collections Application Profile was led by Pete Johnston,
>chair of the Collections Description Working Group [15]. This
>working group was characterized by an interested and involved
>community which provided lengthy and valuable comments on
>various drafts of the Application Profile, showing a high-level
>of buy-in to the Application Profile by the community.
>
>The DCMI Usage Board undertook an informal review of the
>draft profile in September 2005.  The Application Profile was
>then formally submitted to the Usage Board for a review in
>mid-2006, resulting in further feedback to the Working Group.
>When Pete stood down as chair of the Group in 2006, work
>on the Application profile was taken over by Sarah Shreeves
>and Muriel Foulonneau. Sarah Shreeves and Muriel Foulonneau
>submitted a revised version of the Collections Application
>Profile to the Usage Board in March 2007 and the Profile was
>reviewed by the Usage Board at its March 2007 meeting. Although
>some minor issues were flagged (see below), the Usage Board
>approved the profile as a conforming Application Profile.
>
>Review criteria and result
>
>The Usage Board determined that the Collections Application
>Profile "conforms", which in this context was taken to mean:
>
>-- the profile's usage of terms conforms to the DCMI Abstract
>    Model;
>
>-- profile, taken as a whole, is internally consistent; and
>
>-- the profile is sufficiently documented to serve the needs
>    of the community of interest.
>
>Other comments (not related to conformance per se)
>
>-- The Usage Board has long recognized that, in practice, the
>    dc:identifier property is used both for identification and
>    for location.  The property cld:isLocatedAt, a sub-property
>    of dc:relation, refers to physical locations. Some reviewers
>    felt that expressing digital locations with dc:identifier
>    and physical locations with a separate property could prove
>    to be problematic, especially for mixed physical and digital
>    collections.
>
>-- Some reviewers questioned whether it is helpful to define
>    cld:isLocatedAt as a subproperty of dc:relation (hence subject
>    to being resolved to dc:relation during dumb down).
>
>-- In the Purpose and Scope section, the text states: "Those
>    resources may be of any type, so examples might include
>    [...] catalogues of such collections (as aggregations
>    of metadata records)."  This sentence implies a generally
>    understood library-world meaning of "record".  Some reviewers
>    saw a potential for confusion with the different, more specific
>    concept of "record" defined in the DCMI Abstract Model.
>
>References
>
>  [1] 
> http://dublincore.org/groups/collections/collection-application-profile/2007-03-09/
>  [2] http://dublincore.org/documents/2007/04/02/abstract-model/
>  [3] http://dublincore.org/groups/collections/collection-terms/2007-03-09/
>  [4] http://dublincore.org/groups/collections/colldesc-type/2007-03-09/
>  [5] http://dublincore.org/groups/collections/accrual-method/2007-03-09/
>  [6] http://dublincore.org/groups/collections/accrual-policy/2007-03-09/
>  [7] http://dublincore.org/groups/collections/frequency/2007-03-09/
>  [8] 
> http://dublincore.org/groups/collections/collection-ap-summary/2007-03-09/
>  [9] http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/rslp/model/
>[10] 
>http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0202&L=dc-collections&P=60
>[11] http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/cd-focus/
>[12] http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/rslp/
>[13] http://dlib.ukoln.ac.uk/dlib/september00/powell/09powell.html
>[14] http://dublincore.org/usage/meetings/2007/03/barcelona/Topic-cdap.txt
>[15] http://dublincore.org/groups/collections/

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sarah L. Shreeves
Coordinator, Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and 
Scholarship (IDEALS)
University of Illinois Library at Urbana-Champaign
Phone: 217-244-3877 or 217-233-4648
Email: [log in to unmask]
http://ideals.uiuc.edu/