On Wed, 7 Aug 1996, R M Heery wrote:
> A quick comment from the flat shoed perspective..... I think we need to
> have a bit more context about how the schemes will be used, in
> particular how they will be created, and if they are permitted then what
> about control? I think there is a danger that the simplicity of DC will be
> lost if qualifiers get out of control. Could we keep DC simple and use
> Warwick framework to incorporate the richer metadata?
Keeping DC simple is an admirable idea but we need it to be expressive
enough to actually be useful. By constraining ourselves to the magic 13
DC elements, we need to have the ability to use subelements so that we
can, for example, distinguish between UDC, DDC and MESH subject elements
and author names, email addresses and snail mail addresses. So I'd say
that having subelements is vital, even for "simple" metadata (I'm not a
trained MARC cataloguer but I'd still like to distinguish between an
author's name and his address for example). Now whether we want to
constrain the number of subelements and the values that they can take
is another question. If we do, then I'd certainly plead strongly for a
get out clause such as the classic IETF "x-" prefix for local,
non-standard subelement names or non-standard values for standard
subelements.
> With the proposed schemes is it envisaged that authors or web
> administrators will enter schemes? I guess not as they will not have the
> knowledge of different schemes. It seems to me schemes are needed when you
> try to squeeze a more complex record into DC which takes place further
> down the line than HTML.
I guess they will in the embedded metadata in HTML 2.0 (or at least their
SGML editors will eh Liam? :-) ). However DC is more that just the
embedding of metadata in HTML documents. Some DCES SGML documents might
be automagically created from IAFA templates or MARC records or
something.
Tatty bye,
Jim'll
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Jon "Jim'll" Knight, Researcher, Sysop and General Dogsbody, Dept. Computer
Studies, Loughborough University of Technology, Leics., ENGLAND. LE11 3TU.
* I've found I now dream in Perl. More worryingly, I enjoy those dreams. *
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