The recent discussion on DC Resource Types has been *very* interesting to
me, and also instructive on how difficult it is to slouch toward
consensus. Therefore I have become of two minds, along the lines that you
have experienced already. That is, I have now divided my original
proposal into two:
1) The Minimalist Draft - here I came down firmly on the side of
simplicity as well as individual extensibility. Only the top level is
defined. Everything else is left either to the individual or to an
existing controlled vocabulary that is appropriate for the items being
described (I then suggest a "Scheme" attribute to specify the vocabulary)
2) The Structuralist Draft - here I continued along the vein of defining
up to three levels, but I revised it a bit based on comments here on the
list. I must apologize for not having time to thoroughly digest
everyone's contribution, but I promise to spend more time doing so when I
return from four days in Victoria, BC on Tuesday. This draft benefited
most from the contributions of Terry Kuny and Arthur Chapman, although
comments from others also helped (keep them coming...).
You will notice that I deleted the top-level category of "Miscellaneous"
which did indeed seem poor as Terry Kuny observed. I also added a
top-level category "Environment" to attempt to get at what is really
different about virtual reality words, games, and chat rooms. I'm sure
you'll tell me if I'm off the deep end on this. Another somewhat major
change is replacing "Document" with "Text". I am convinced that given the
top levels we are discussing Text makes much more sense than Document.
But, as always, I am open to persuasion.
In looking at the various types we are trying to define I tried to
consider only the type and not the content. Therefore I deleted such
terms as "biography" as having to do with content rather than a definable
document type.
Everything is available, as before, at:
http://sunsite.Berkeley.EDU/Metadata/types.html
Knock yourselves out and then come and knock me out (virtually, of
course!). Thanks for all the thoughtful and thought-provoking input.
Roy Tennant
|