Switching gears from the excellent discussion of HTML implementation, I
would like to suggest that what we are talking about is "pidgin metadata".
Pidgins are makeshift languages that arise when speakers of different
languages have to work together or conduct trade without being able to
learn each others' languages. They tend to use borrowed words, little
inflection, and loose word order.
Where children have grown up with pidgins as their mother tongue, as
on slave plantations, they have used their instinctive language skills
to invent grammatical complexity, transforming their parents' pidgins
into grammatically richer, more expressive "creoles".
The Dublin Core is a pidgin created by speakers of different metadata
communities. Its use in conjunction with qualifiers by user communities
with specific, complex needs will represent its "creolization".
In these terms, I think our philosophy should be: "The Dublin Core is
pidgin metadata. It was designed to help integrate access to information
from diverse communities and traditions over the Internet. We describe
the scope of its thirteen elements here. Use as many or as few of them
as you like. Use them right in your documents or in a separate catalog.
If the elements are not specific or exhaustive enough, add your own
personal elements or make an existing element more specific by using a
recognized qualifier (see Register). By using qualifiers extensively
and within a larger user community, you can roll your own creole!"
Tom
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