On Wed, 8 Jan 1997, Ron Daniel Jr. wrote:
> >Introduction
> s/thirteen/fifteen  - at least 3 occurances

Done.
 
> >Element: Title (TITLE)
> 
> For the AACR2 Scheme, do you want to say something like:
> 
> ... The TYPE attribute must be specified to indicate if the title
> is the main, continued, spine, translated, etc. Type="main" is the
> default for this scheme.
> 
> (I don't have AACR2 handy, but it might be nice to list the dozen or
> so types of titles it specifies.)

I've put the suggested text in.  I don't have a copy of AACR2 around
either so I'll have to grab a copy from the library at some point (unless
I can find it online somewhere?).
 
> > Element: Subject and Keywords (SUBJECT)
> 
> You have "keyword" as the only type. Why not have it as one of the
> schemes, perhaps even instead of internal?

The idea was that schemes would be well known, externally defined schemes
for doing things whereas types would be for things where there wasn't such
a scheme.  However this doesn't always work out (for example COVERAGE
makes use of combinations of both scheme and type).
 
> > Element: Description
> 
> You distinguish between URL and URN. Why not use URI? (This comment applies
> to lots of other elements as well).

Because URI is a rather unbounded set (URCs, URAs, etc) and I thought it
was better to explicitly say point out URLs from URNs.
 
> > Element: Creator or Author (CREATOR)
> 
> I'm not really wild about the email, postal, .... types. Oh well.
> Same thing applies to the publisher and contributor elements.

We need something that has that information in it as we might end up
generating DC from white pages services that hold this information.  And
some authors/publishers/etc might well want to provide lots of contact
information (if you're a politican, an activist, a looney, etc).
 
> > Element: Contributor (CONTRIBUTOR)
> 
> Do we want to have AACR2 as well as USMARC for Schemes? USMARC would
> have the field and subfield indicators, but AACR2 would use simple
> text labels. This comment applies to several other elements as well.

Hmm, I don't really know enough about AACR2 to really give an opinion on
this but it sounds vaguely reasonable to these untutored ears.
 
> > Date (DATE)
> 
> You say that ANSI.X3.30-1985 is the default. At a minimum you should
> tell implementors to check the value for punctuation such as '/'. I
> think we are going to see a LOT of things like
> <date>12/25/96</date>
> in hand-prepared descriptions.

And then do what?  The above form is totally ambiguous in some cases - for
example is 01/07/97 supposed to be 1st July 1997 or 7th January 1997?
Depends which side of the Atlantic you're on.  I'd say that implementors
should be encouraged to discard malformed dates as they can be potentially
more confusing than useful.
 
> I think you should also advise
> catalogers to explicitly indicate the scheme and not rely on it
> being the default.

Good point.  I think cataloguers are likely to be explicit anyway as
that's just the sort of people they are.

> > Type (TYPE)
> 
> Enumerate the DCObjects types, don't refer to the document?

I did originally but someone suggested putting it in a separate document
as it was a bit long.  I'm easy either way; I beginning to think that we
might want to split this qualifiers document up into its sections anyway
as it starting to get a bit long.
 
> Delete the empty "type" heading.
> > Format (FORMAT)
> 
> delete the empty type heading.

I left those in there as placeholders in case we did come up with any
types for those elements.  If we can't then we can remove them if we
decide that there's some consensus brewing here and we can remove the
"draft" banner from the document.
 
> > Resource Identifier (IDENTIFIER) 
> 
> You say the identifier points to the "original, canonical" version
> of the resource. Not all resource will have the original
> version as the canonical one. Some will want the most recent one
> to be considered canonical. 

OK, I've renamed the that qualifer value to be Primary instead of
canonical (based on some comments from a few other DCers who thought
"canonical" by itself might confuse some people) and removed the
"original" from the description.

> > Source
> s/origination/provenance ?

Done (though I had to look up what "provenance" meant in the dictionary so
I'm not sure how readable that makes the document!)
 
> > Language
> Should "Free Text" be the default? Analogous to "Date", I think
> we will see a lot of hand-entered tags like
> <Language>Spanish</Language>

Done.

> > Coverage
> s/temporary/temporal

Done.

> Provide an example or two in the Freetext Scheme - e.g. "19'th century France"
> or "Italy during the Reformation"

Done.

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. *