Between Barbara's reply and Joe's it sounds like dc:coverage should be
expressly NOT topical. Now I'm REALLY confused about what it's supposed
to be.
kc
On 2/27/12 5:52 AM, Joseph Tennis wrote:
> Sorry if I've missed something in this thread, but I believe
> dc:coverage is at least in part a contribution from the archives and
> records management fields to DCMES. That is, a treaty or contract of
> sale or any other record could "cover" something (e.g., Vancouver, BC
> from now 'til 2020) and not be "about" the same thing (e.g., exchange
> of land rights from the crown to an indigenous nation). If this
> holds, and if RDA intends on being useful to both librarianship and
> archivy then it has to contend with different domain models such as
> this. I know it's my old axe at this point, but purpose guides
> design and implementation, and the purposes discussed below are very
> library-y ;-) -- not very archivy-y.
>
> I remember being in Singapore saying that we should to a UB AP to
> make the semantics of these two clearer without changing their
> DCTERMS domains and ranges, but that work item was never completed in
> the UB.
>
> Happy Monday, all!
>
> joe
>
> Joseph T. Tennis Assistant Professor The Information School
> University of Washington
>
> Reviews Editor, Knowledge Organization
>
> [log in to unmask] faculty.washington.edu/jtennis
>
> On Feb 27, 2012, at 5:11 AM, Tillett, Barbara wrote:
>
>> Couldn't the "topic," i.e., "Subject," be what the thing is
>> "about"? We have other attributes to use for the form or genre or
>> medium of performance or other aspects. - Barbara
>>
>> -----Original Message----- From: List for discussion on application
>> profiles and mappings [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
>> Karen Coyle Sent: Friday, February 24, 2012 5:57 PM To:
>> [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [DC-RDA] The meaning of Subject
>> (and Coverage)
>>
>> This is a great example of how hard it is to define "topic of."
>>
>> In MARC21 data, there are subject headings that are geographical in
>> nature (and they are coded as "geographical subject headings" not
>> just "subject headings": tag 651, as opposed to tag 650 for
>> "topical topics"). Geographical subject headings are used when the
>> primary topic of the resource is the geographical area ("California
>> -- History"). You can also have geographical facets in subject
>> headings (at least in LCSH). That is when there is a main topic
>> ("Dog breeding") with a geographical aspect ("in Canada").
>>
>> There are also places in the record to put geographical info when
>> the resource is itself geographical in nature (e.g. a map, which
>> can get scale and coordinates).[1] So if your map is coded with
>> geographical coordinates for Berkeley, California, can you consider
>> Berkeley, California the subject of the map? I think many people
>> would. There is also a field that gives hierarchical geographical
>> access to publications like newspapers [2] based on where they are
>> published (which is often their main topical coverage as well, such
>> as "The San Francisco Chronicle").
>>
>> Note that changing the definition of dc:subject also means
>> re-thinking dc:coverage, which has this definition:
>>
>> "The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial
>> applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the
>> resource is relevant."
>>
>> Is dc:coverage still to be used for "space or temporal topic"? If
>> it is decided that space and temporal topics would be covered by
>> dc:subject and dc:coverage is only suitable for "...the spatial
>> applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the
>> resource is relevant" then we have to consider whether people will
>> reasonably be able to make the distinction between "spatial
>> applicability" and "space... topic." Note that such a change also
>> removes the "temporal" aspect of dc:coverage, at least as it is now
>> defined.
>>
>> I think something would be lost by putting geographical names in
>> "subject." A bit less is lost if the geographical name is a URI
>> within, say, GeoNames, that clearly indicates the
>> "geographicalness" of the value. But DC doesn't require URIs. This
>> is also true for temporal topics -- which probably actually need
>> their own property apart from geographical aspects, but that's
>> water under the bridge.
>>
>> I think changing the definition of dc:subject would, in fact, have
>> to also change the definition of dc:coverage. In addition, it would
>> require people to make the difficult distinction between "topically
>> about" and "geographically applicable," something that I think is
>> extremely hard and therefore not something we should require of
>> people using DC. The current situation is not ideal, by any means,
>> but I believe that the suggested change would make it worse.
>>
>> kc
>>
>> [1]http://loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/bd034.html [2]
>> http://www.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/bd752.html
>>
>> On 2/24/12 1:20 PM, Thomas Baker wrote:
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>> Since 2006, the usage "comment" for the definition of dc:subject
>>> (and since 2008, dcterms:subject) has included the following
>>> sentence [1,2,3]:
>>>
>>> To describe the spatial or temporal topic of the resource, use
>>> the Coverage element.
>>>
>>> The intent was to provide guidance on when to use Coverage:
>>>
>>> The spatial or temporal topic of the resource... [5]
>>>
>>> and when to use Subject, which had a clearly overlapping
>>> definition:
>>>
>>> The topic of the resource. [6]
>>>
>>> I recently had a chat about this with Gordon, who points out --
>>> and I'll let him elaborate -- that current notions of subject
>>> ("aboutness") do not treat "spatial or temporal" topics
>>> separately from any other topics.
>>>
>>> In my reading of meeting notes and decision documents from the
>>> time (see "Background" below), the addition of the sentence
>>> quoted above to the Comment for Subject was not intended as a
>>> clarification of the formal definition of Subject, but rather as
>>> guidance about "which element to use" at a time when people
>>> commonly wanted to use the fifteen elements in non-overlapping
>>> ways.
>>>
>>> If this usage guideline is now unhelpful, should it be removed
>>> (after due process of course)?
>>>
>>> Tom
>>>
>>>
>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>>
Background
>>>
>>> The sentence from the Comment for Subject, quoted above, was
>>> added at the time the definition of Coverage was changed from:
>>>
>>> The extent or scope of the content of the resource. [4]
>>>
>>> to:
>>>
>>> The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial
>>> applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which
>>> the resource is relevant. [5]
>>>
>>> as explained in [3]. This brought the definition of Coverage
>>> very close to the definition of Subject:
>>>
>>> The topic of the resource. [6]
>>>
>>> At the time, it was widely felt that Dublin Core elements should
>>> not overlap in meaning; indeed, it was not until 2008 that
>>> Creator was declared to be a subproperty of Contributor [7]. As
>>> near as I can tell, then, the sentence quoted above was added to
>>> the usage comment for Subject in an effort to provide guidance to
>>> users about "which element to use" in a case where two
>>> definitions clearly overlapped.
>>>
>>> [1] http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/#subject [2]
>>> http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/#terms-subject [3]
>>> http://dublincore.org/usage/decisions/2006/2006-03.dcmes-changes.shtml
>>>
>>>
[4] http://dublincore.org/documents/2006/08/28/dcmi-terms/#coverage
>>> [5]
>>> http://dublincore.org/documents/2006/12/18/dcmi-terms/#coverage
>>> [6]
>>> http://dublincore.org/documents/2006/12/18/dcmi-terms/#subject
>>> [7]
>>> http://dublincore.org/usage/decisions/2008/dcterms-changes/#sect-3
>>>
>>
>>
>>>
--
>> Karen Coyle [log in to unmask] http://kcoyle.net ph: 1-510-540-7596
>> m: 1-510-435-8234 skype: kcoylenet
--
Karen Coyle
[log in to unmask] http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet
|