The term Sub-element appears in the original DC specification (the first
workshop report). This is a fine term, except that it precludes using
that term for the much more deserving and encompassing concept of what
a subelement may one day mean to us, namely, the components of element
"content", if any. This is a concept borrowed from the Z39.50 GRS record,
which allows each element to have data that is fully hierarchical in
structure and to have distinguished qualifiers, which can be thought of
as a special kinds of subelements.
So I propose that we leave the term "subelement" alone for now, reserving
it for possible later use in referring to generalized content data. Instead
of subelement, I propose using the term "qualifier", as in the User Guide.
Pro: reserves the name for generalized subelement "content"
Pro: "qualifier" distinguishes the specialized kind of subelement we mean
-John
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