Being unfamiliar with ANSI X3.30-1985, I rely on the following extracts for
my understanding of that standard.
Extract from draft-kunze-dc-00.txt:
4.7. Date Label: DATE
The date the resource was made available in its present form. The
recommended best practice is an 8 digit number in the form YYYYMMDD
as defined by ANSI X3.30-1985. In this scheme, the date element for
the day this is written would be 19961203, or December 3, 1996.
Many other schema are possible, but if used, they should be
identified in an unambiguous manner.
Extract from Dublin Core Qualifiers, by Jon Knight, and Martin Hamilton:
Element: Date (DATE)
This element holds the date of publication of the object that the Dublin
Core metadata relates to.
qualifiers and values:
Scheme
ANSI.X3.30-1985
Date conforms to the date formats described in ANSI X3.30-1985.
For the A.D. era to December 31, 9999 YYYYMMDD is used; for example
19960831 (the same as FGDC?). It also defines other formats for
B.C. dates and A.D. after 9999. This is the default scheme value
if the scheme is not explicitly stated.
...
The examples given suggest this standard does not handle times. In many
fields, information older than an hour, or even than 15 minutes, is stale.
Financial information and news in general are examples. Such items require
a much more accurate scheme, such as one based on ISO 8601 - "Data elements
and interchange formats - Information interchange - Representation of dates
and times". Unless ANSI.X3.30-1985 handles time information in a suitable
manner, I would suggest the treatment of this standard as a "best practice"
or "default" is inappropriate.
Furthermore, I consider the use of national standards for an endeavour so
closely related to the World Wide Web to be misguided.
Misha
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