Folks:

The end of summer is proving to be something like "travel hell" but I 
haven't forgotten my promise to set out my concerns about the 
long-deferred proposals for new properties from the Libraries AP group.

I know that there are concerns about the proposals themselves, but I'm 
not going to address those, except to point out that their approval is 
not by any means a slam-dunk, regardless of any free-floating guilt we 
might be feeling about how long they've been in the pipeline.  I think 
that we should be careful not to succumb to pressure to approve based on 
how much time has passed--like marriage entered into in haste we will 
have far more time to regret our actions than we will if we hold our 
ground and take the rotten tomatoes calmly.  I realize that because of 
the delay some libraries have gone ahead and punted based on the 
original proposals, but while I empathize with their position, our 
responsibility is to do the right thing for the community as a whole, 
and I would suggest that our responsibility is best dispatched by 
looking more broadly at the problems these proposals are designed to solve.

The RDA standard is set to be published early in 2009, and the DCMI/RDA 
TG has already registered provisionally the final list of properties and 
subproperties approved by the Joint Steering Committee (the body engaged 
in developing the standard).   These properties, currently 250 of them, 
can be viewed at 
http://metadataregistry.org/schemaprop/list/schema_id/1.html

There are amongst these properties, the following:

Date of capture (subproperty of Place and date of capture), at: 
http://metadataregistry.org/schemaprop/show/id/272.html

Edition statement, at: http://metadataregistry.org/schemaprop/show/id/2.html

I believe that these would suit the needs of the Libraries AP TG, and 
they are available NOW, in a schema that is designed specifically for 
library data.  In addition, as Andrew has pointed out, the Collections 
AP has already declared a property corresponding to the Libraries AP 
element for location: 
http://dublincore.org/groups/collections/collection-application-profile/2007-03-09/#colcldisLocatedAt

Given this situation, I believe that there is no reason to go through 
the motions of considering the properties proposed by the DC Libraries 
AP, which would require that they be included in a DCMI namespace.  
Duplicating these properties in a DCMI namespace would be a disservice 
to the DC community, confusing them about our mission and intentions.  I 
believe that even if the UB could be convinced to pass these (a big IF, 
and it could only be done with some heavy political kool-aid) the time 
it would take to finalize the decisions would be far longer than the 
Libraries TG would find acceptable.

While I can anticipate that the Libraries AP group might bring up some 
objections based on the provisional status of the RDA properties, the 
status will change to "published" when a formal review process is set 
up, and the reality is that the properties and URLs are stable as they 
are now regardless of the vagaries of JSC politics.  Our change 
management policies on the registry are similar to DCMI's and we will 
have notification systems in place as well within the year.

I believe that the UB should decline to review the properties at this 
time and suggest that the Libraries AP TG look into the RDA and CLD 
properties instead.

Diane