Surely, wouldn't recurring events, with some level of predictability, be
classified as a "cycle"? Any such cycle would be documented somewhere. So
rather than having an event surrogate, which is basically an anchor for other
data, a cycle would have a full encyclopaedic entry somewhere. The "Event"
record would function purely as a discovery mechanism, providing an anchor
for the documentation related to the event cycle (ie: "Show me everything
that is related to the 'event' called Heart Beat, that also doesn't relate to
the TV series about an English constable and his young wife in the '60s").
One would be foolish, for example, to attempt to generate an event
(surrogate/authority) record listing individual occurences of the tide, or
the beating of a human heart. One could, however, attempt to document the
phenomenon, with links to related materials (eg: gravitation, liquid flows,
neural processes and muscular action). Documentation supporting a cycle would
include raw measurements (eg: ECG readings, muscular contraction under
electrical stimulus), a bunch of theories about the observed phenomenon ("The
heart beats because there are little fairies pushing it") and, perhaps,
multi-media educational material (a VRML walkthrough of a beating heart,
indicating firing of neurons, contractions of muscles, balances of fluid
pressures and activation of the heart valves).
So you could generate an Event record, which however raises the question
of... who created the tides? Do we list the Earth and Moon as Contributors?
Or do we just choose to excercise the optionality of those fields, and leave
them out?
Regards,
Alex Satrapa
David Bearman wrote:
> In my experience from data modeling in the Smithsonian, recurrent
> environmental events - seasons, times of day, etc. were important in
> discovery. Equally important were events in the life of objects such as
> states of decay, cycles of hormones, stages of growth. Both tended to be
> more relevant to natural science resources. Not surprisingly, cultural
> objects were more significantly related to social events in which objects
> participate that have been part of the examples - exhibits, performances,
> publication, etc.
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