Am 05.01.2012 12:46, schrieb Karen Coyle:
> Quoting Andy Powell <[log in to unmask]>:
>
> --- cut ---
>>
>> Minor comment...
>>
>> The implication here is that the DCAM requires too much investment to
>> understand it. I tend to disagree (of course, as one of the authors
>> I'm biased! :-) ). What's missing is the justification for why the
>> investment is worthwhile.
>
> Andy, it's the old "you can lead a horse to water..." No matter what
> your justification is, the readers will have their own motivation and
> there's not much you can do to change that. If too many people are
> finding it "too hard" then that's a reality to be faced.
I think both is correct. It's not only a matter of necessary depth, but
mabe even more a matter of the background that the people have. There is
no "one size fits all". We need one DCAM, but very different views on
it. I would like to stress the SKOS example once more: SKOS is very
technical and totally RDF from a technical perspective. However, you
could easily provide documentation for SKOS that addresses a thesaurus
maintainer without mentioning any RDF details at all (However, you maybe
would have to repeat some stuff that is defined in RDF, but that's no
problem).
> Also, I read Jane's comment as acknowledging that there are many
> different potential readers, with a range of needs and motivations.
> There are folks who may need to understand things at a deep level, and
> others who only need to follow some simple instructions. It is important
> to provide both. I've been likening the guts of RDF to TCP/IP -- few
> users of the Internet need to understand packet switching in order to do
> useful things. The other analogy often used is that of driving a car vs.
> understanding internal combustion. If we want linked data to be used
> widely, we can't only address the needs of a few engineers.
>
Absolutely, and even worse, in this case we are not only talking about
linked data, as DCAM and Dublin Core metadata is used outside linked
data, too. So we try to do something difficult: we want to (re-)create
an abstract model that fits to all applications and still is usefull.
AND we want to document it in a way that everyone understands it (albeit
on different levels of details). If we can do this, it might be a great
door opener to linked data for metadata applications.
Cheers,
Kai
--
Kai Eckert
Universitätsbibliothek Mannheim
Stellv. Leiter Abteilung Digitale Bibliotheksdienste
Schloss Schneckhof West / 68131 Mannheim
Tel. 0621/181-2946 Fax 0621/181-2918
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