I've cobbled together a quick draft of Resource Types. Terry Kuny's model
and the Jon Knight/Martin Hamilton draft served as the main models, but as
you will see I took a lot of liberties. It will make a lot more sense to
you to see it on the Web page rather than as an email message, but before
I give you the URL I want to quickly explain some of my thinking.
When I reviewed the various lists of resource types (and the individual
contributions on the list) I tried to think of categories within which
each would logically fit. The idea is that someone could limit a search
to type IMAGE and they should logically get back any one of several kinds
of images. Or, if they desire a more narrow focus they can specify
IMAGE.PHOTOGRAPH, etc. So we have at least a couple things to keep in
mind: 1) what to call things and 2) in which broad category they belong.
I think we also need to keep in mind what the purpose(s) of this element
are. If no one is going to parse down to the nth level, then we shouldn't
spend time specifying it. What will we actually *use*?
There's also the issue of extensibility. Do we need to identify every last
possibility (I hope not) or can we devise a scheme that will allow some
local variation with a flag so that it could be ignored if the record is
processed by a system that is unfamiliar with the type.
I've made you wait long enough. It is at:
http://sunsite.Berkeley.EDU/Metadata/types.html
Knock yourself out. Then post any constructive comments to the list. Thanks,
Roy Tennant
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