A little further reflection leads me to suggest that
two small changes to the RFC would help clarify the
Dublin Core semantics further. These concern the
three groups of DC elements which are listed in the
introduction to section 3., which were introduced
to assist readers to grasp the scope of the elements
and also to help clarify some perhaps subtle distinctions
between the intended uses of a few of the elements.
The three groups are
> (1) elements related mainly to the Content of the resource,
> (2) elements related mainly to the resource when viewed as Intellectual Property, and
> (3) elements related mainly to the Instantiation of the resource.
I propose that
a. TYPE be moved from the Instantiation group to the Content group
b. LANGUAGE be moved from the Content group to the Instantiation
group.
Proposal a. clarifies the intention of TYPE in relation to FORMAT.
TYPE is to be used to indicate the general scope or genre of a
resource (text, image, audio etc) while FORMAT indicates the
instantiation, often allowing the client to choose which tool
is required in order to take advantage of it. I understand
that confusion of type and format is common in cataloging,
sometimes to the extent of systems throwing up their
metaphorical hands and lumping them. But since in DC we
have chosen to separate these, then the distinction is
most clearly asserted by placing them in different groups.
Proposal b: The RFC states
"The language of the intellectual content of the resource."
I believe that this will normally mean the language in which
any text is written or sounded. It is thus primarily related
to Instantiation. No doubt that could also be considered
a Content issue, and in some (particularly more artistic)
cases the language is intrinsic to the creative content,
but my judgement is that the more common case is that
language is "merely" an instantiation issue. The intention
of the three groups in the RFC was not to imply that the semantics
were absolutely sharp, but rather to help users to perceive the
general class of information embodied in each of the DC elements.
I understand that a late revision to the RFC is still possible,
so would request that the list give John Kunze an indication of
whether this should be done.
---------------
Thanks to participants in the TYPE working group for
discussions which clarified the TYPE vs FORMAT issue,
and to Peter Winn for pointing out the LANGUAGE issue.
--
__________________________________________________
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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