Having just spent a weekend of my free time trying to dig geoloc data
for Universities from Wikipedia (see blog for rationale: http://repositoryman.blogspot.com/2009/02/repository-meets-semantic-web-semantic.html
) I would hazard two observations
(a) asking people to name places is not accurate enough to be useful
(b) giving co-ordinates is not sufficiently illuminating to be useful
I think we need both!
I don't think that picking from a gazeteer is as useful as it sounds
either - (do you know how many Londons there are in the world?)
--
Les
On 3 Feb 2009, at 11:16, Rosemary Russell wrote:
> I got some feedback from Maurice Vanderfeesten at SURF who
> coordinates the DRIVER guidelines - the DC:Coverage recommendation
> was apparently inherited from previous DAREnet work and no
> alternative suggestions were received during the consultation
> period. However the guidelines are always open to suggestions for
> improvement (thanks for this one), and the plan is to make the
> guidelines available in a wiki to enable easier management of
> updates and version control - there will be a 'comment' facility for
> each page. SURF is currently running a test version - I've forwarded
> your email in the meantime.
>
> Regards, Rosemary
>
> James S Reid wrote:
>> Could somebody on the list shed some light on why the DRIVER
>> guidelines state that for DC:Coverage the " Recommended best
>> practice is to select the value from a controlled vocabulary (for
>> example, the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names or TGN) and that,
>> where appropriate, *named places or time periods be used in
>> preference to numeric identifiers as*, for example, sets of co-
>> ordinates or date ranges. If necessary, repeat this element to
>> encode multiple locations or periods."
>>
>> This is at odds with what we have been encouraging for years
>> (favouring explicit georeferencing via no-ambiguous coordinate
>> referencing) as part of having the JISC IE georeferenced and indeed
>> is guaranteed to provide ambiguity e.g. the placename 'london' is
>> not non-ambigous were as N 51° 30' 30''W 0° 7' 31'' is (this is the
>> UK London as opposed to the Canadian one at N 42° 59' 0''W 81° 13'
>> 58' ).
>>
>> See also our GAP work - http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/index/Geospatial_Application_Profile
>>
>> ??
>>
>>
>>
>> James S Reid
>> EDINA (Geoservices)
>> Uniiversity of Edinburgh
>>
>> tel:+44 (0) 131 651 1383
>> mob: 0759 5116988
>>
>> "Walking down the road
>> With a blade in your waist
>> Johnny you're too bad, Johnny you're too bad"
>>
>> John Martyn 11th September 1948 - 29th January 2009
>>
>>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
>> Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
>>
>
>
> --
> Rosemary Russell
> UKOLN, University of Bath
> Bath BA2 7AY
> http://www.ukoln.ac.uk
> +44 1483 560342
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