One of my challenges as a new Dublin Corite (Corian?) is to determine how
the elements fit my scenario which is IBM Digital Library software or an
integrated storage, search, and retrieval system that creates HTML pages
on the fly from metadata kept in a DB2 database. So putting DC elements in
headers is not an option.
We are planning on completing the Coverage Element for both place and time
(and subject but that's another story) using a *hierarchy* of textual
terms. Example:
Place: Latin America ; Caribbean Area ; Haiti ; Port-au-Prince
Time: 20th century, Late ; 1990s ; 1997
The reasons for using this hierarchy are to improve and allow more options
for search retrieval. For example,
1) the same record will be retrieved with a search "Image
Presidents Haiti" and the searches "Image Presidents Caribbean Area" and
"Image Presidents Latin America"
2) eventually we hope to have a mechanism to allow the user to use
these fields to zoom in or expand out on a search
3) the hierarchy allows me to build layers of browsability into
the user interface
In order, for this to be effective the computer will need some "qualifier"
to indicate what is a higher or lower level in the hierarchy.
Question: Do or should the current proposed qualifiers work for a
hierarchy of temporal and spatial terms?
Kass Evans
Florida International University
Digital Library Initiative
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