> Date: Fri, 19 Dec 1997 11:53:12 -0500
> From: David Bearman <[log in to unmask]>
> ...
> I. It is important to indicate the relation between one information
> resource and another in metadata for discovery. Because each information
> resource may have its own metadata set, these relations need to be explicit.
David,
I think your report on the Relation semantics is very clear. One missing
piece is that the resources on either side need to be explicit. Currently
we only make the second resource explicit (by using its identifier), while
the first or "present" resource (the resource being described) is implicit.
This seems to me missing in our discussion and in the basic DC RFC (#1).
There's no problem in situations where the implicit first resource is
obvious, as in the embedded metadata case. But it's definitely a problem
in the non-embedded case because we haven't left a place in either Relation
or Source for the first resource to be indicated.
One solution would be to let Relation (and Source) contain an optional
extra identifier for the first resource. This would probably help
implementation of even the embedded case, since that metadata will
likely be separated from the mother resource when it goes into the
search system indexes, and there both the first and second resources
must be explicit.
-John
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