Focus.
The main issue that seeks resolution on Resource Types is how are the
class of
text containing objects, both electronic-native and those of mixed
orogeny
get their semantics catalogued in DC. None of this precludes non-text
centred objects nor serendipitous application of these techniques to
Anything Else On The Net, I call DUO's, document UNLIKE objects.
Since adoption of a more specific, proliferating taxonomy of text-centred
objects at the top level of the document heirarchy can quickly grow
unwieldly while exposing its incompleteness, there needs to be a
high-level, broad classification of text-centred objects under the
document
class.
I suggested pub, msg, file, form (form as the front-end to an application
not the app itself) as a first cut at document subclassing, others
suggested (non)fiction and there is also Roy's (in)exhaustive list on
sunsite.berkeley.edu. Each of these are partial solutions, and none are
complete. What needs to happen, IMHO, is a top-level enumeration of
text-oid subclasses that, if used alone (without subqualification), will
'work' in the that some useful sense of the semantics of this object can
be
derived from the DC record.
Obviously, the more accurate and rich the cataloging, the more value-added
information can be used on retrieval to process the object. But the DC
effort has been an exercise in picking the low-hanging fruit; closing in
on
the simple solutions and building upon those that work well in preparation
for tackling the more complex aspects of the problem. The top divisions
of
the document class should be broad and the a subdivisions of those should
be populated, at least as a first set of options, by experts in the fields
involved and are not necessary for the first cut.
It is more important to get some basic classification out there and
working
and not to get hung up on the taxonomy of all things written.
-marc
crossing his fingers that this comes out formatted nicely....
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