At 09:14 PM 9/28/97 -0400, Carl Lagoze wrote:
>Date, as I've said to a number of people, is a data type, not a
>semantically meaningful term. Unqualified it is useless.
I try not to disagree with Carl, because he frequently proves
me wrong. Nevertheless, in this case I will.
I'm relatively comfortable with the definition of date
as "Date issued in current form". This gets nasty in the
case of a digitized version of an original work, but the
issues there seem to be special cases in dealing
with the question of "how should we describe and relate
descriptions of different renditions of a work". This may
turn out to be the central point of Helsinki.
(Its an issue I have stayed out of because of time pressures,
but after Oct. 1 I should be able to look at it.)
Before we go off and change Date, especially if that change is
essentially to add a version of it that corresponds to
"date converted to current format", lets see if that is really
the problem that needs solving.
Ron Daniel Jr. voice:+1 505 665 0597
Advanced Computing Lab fax:+1 505 665 4939
MS B287 email:[log in to unmask]
Los Alamos National Lab http://www.acl.lanl.gov/~rdaniel
Los Alamos, NM, USA, 87545
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