Cornelia Haber wrote:
>
> I'm afraid, I don't understand the destinction between
> DC.Relation.IsFormatOf and DC.Relation.HasFormat.
> For me it is only important to know, that this document
> is available in another format and where to find that other
> version. Which of the documents derived from the
> other is not important, for the only difference is in the
> presentation not in the contents.
"DC.Relation.IsFormatOf" would be part of the metadata set for the
derived resource, and identifies the parent.
"DC.Relation.HasFormat" would be part of the metadata set for a
parent resource and would identify resource(s) derived from that
by "mechanical" re-formatting process(es) which are not intended
to add any intellectual content to the resource.
For some purposes it is extremely significant in which direction
the transformation will have taken place. Some transformations
are not strictly reversible, so there is a different information
content in the parent and child, even though a completely
automated process is used which can be defined by an algorithm
with numerical parameters, and thus involves essentially zero
creative input by the minion performing the transformation.
Obvious examples occur in many multi-media formats, such as
gif -> jpeg. The compression method in jpeg is "lossy",
so the original gif could not be completely recovered.
Thus, the most general version of this relation type must
allow the direction to be specified.
If you want to identify a cluster of resources which
are simply different formats but are "siblings" rather
than parent/children, then either point back from each
of them to a mutual parent (eg the physical photograph
that was scanned, or the data-set used to generate the
image) or perhaps refer to them as a "collection",
and thus use the DC.Relation.IsPartOf type
instead. The solution is probably not unique.
--
__________________________________________________
Dr Simon Cox - Australian Geodynamics Cooperative Research Centre
CSIRO Exploration & Mining, PO Box 437, Nedlands, WA 6009 Australia
T: +61 8 9389 8421 F: +61 8 9389 1906 [log in to unmask]
http://www.ned.dem.csiro.au/SimonCox/
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