On Tue, 11 Nov 1997 13:21:59 -0700, Ron Daniel Jr. wrote:
>At 02:19 PM 11/11/97 -0600, Jordan Reiter wrote:
>Simon Buckingham Shum felt an urge to reveal at 5:12 AM -0600 on 11/11/97:
>> - a new theoretical perspective T on problem P
>> - new contradictory evidence E pertaining to the effectiveness of solutions
>> of class S in domain D
>> - a new system S used to tackle problem P
>> - a new system S' derived from S
>> - a new analysis A derived from theories M and N, of evidence E
>> underpinning solution S
[etc.]
>Would any of these fall under the "Coverage" element in Dublin Core?
>No, they would fall under the "Relation" element.
Well, they certainly do not belong to DC.Coverage but I am not that
sure whether they would fall under the "Relation" element either.
Up to this point, the "Relation" element has been used to describe
formal relationships between a given resource and other resources
that "exist as discrete resources themselves." This element is meant
to deal with "the relationship of this resource to other resources."
[The quotes are from the Weibel/Kunze/Lagoze RFC "Dublin Core
Metadata for Simple Resource Discovery" at
ftp://ds.internic.net/internet-drafts/draft-kunze-dc-01.txt]
And the issues Simon raised hardly constitute formal relationships. A
"a new theoretical perspective T on problem P", just to take out one
of the examples, does not establish this kind of a relationship, nor
does it exist as a discrete resource in its own right. And when it
comes to retrieval, one would hardly query these characteristics in
the "Relation" element, since they are constitutive parts of the
actual resource themselves.
So perhaps such issues better go to the "Subject" and Description"
elements, since they have more to do with the topic and content of
the resource rather than with what we so far have been describing as
"Relation." Otherwise the semantics of the "Relation" element would
have to be rephrased...
Cheers,
Ralf
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Dr. Ralf Schimmer
Niedersaechsische Staats- und Universitaetsbibliothek
D-37070 Goettingen
Tel: +49 551 395230 / Fax: +49 551 393199
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