To me, the whole reason we're allocating metadata to an object is that, by
expending 15 minutes of effort now, we're saving the rest of the world half an
hour each later.
To paraphrase - when allocating metadata to a "thing", the metadata should be
allocated in a way that "makes sense" from the point of view of Jo Average,
who's looking for some information, but dosn't know where to find it.
So a hierarchy of preserved copies of documents (pardon my niavete, but I'm only
guessing here) only relates to one parent document - the branching in the
hierarchies might be due to particular types of replication (eg: was it
photocopied or OCR-ed), or particular replicators (eg: John Smith writes
Sanskrit differently to Phillipa Wright).
Now, ask yourself the question - what is it that someone might be looking for
that you might have the answer to? Perhaps someone is looking for a document
with a particular title, which you are maintaining copies of. That would be
covered by one simplistic DC metadata set, for the hierarchy itself.
Perhaps the person is looking for information about people who can write (and
preferably read) Sanskrit. You'd have at least two DC sets describing versions
of the document written by John and Phillipa. Perhaps you have surrogate records
for John and Phillipa, or at least have pointers to, say Vcards or a four11
database (these pointers would be in the DC.Creator field of the DC set for the
trascriptions that John and Phillipa have been writing).
So you see... the 1:1 issue makes it a lot easier for people to use your
information for their really obtuse queries.
A CD containing pre-recorded tracks would itself count as a collection. It's
DC.Type might be "sound", with a list of "DC.Source" fields pointing to (DC sets
for?) the individual tracks on the CD. These in turn point to (surrogate) DC
meta data sets for the actual performances.
Trying to focus on the creation of DC meta data from the point of view of the
creator is probably "wrong" or "bad" (at the very least, it's damned
egocentric). That's not what meta data is for. Meta data is *supposed* to be
about resource discovery. Well... that's my opinion anyway.
So as you start allocating metadata to your
documents/collections/objects/entities, make sure that the metadata you're
allocating makes sense from a resource discovery perspective.
Another point that raises its head (in my point of view anyway) is at what point
you stop allocating metadata. For example, it is obvious that it's your
responsibility to catalog a CD that you have in your own collection. However, if
the CD publisher was doing their job, the only meta data you need to store is
DC.Title (if that), DC.Description (if that), and DC.Identifier (probably the
publisher's catalogue number - do CDs have an ISBN or URN equivalent?)
In the case of a collection such as the Mark Twain papers... isn't it worth
"cataloguing" the entire set as individual works? Then the entire set, "The Mark
Twain Papers" becomes one collection, with its own record, which then has
two-way links with the individual documents. Yes, it's a lot of work. But if you
do it completely the first time around, it's easier for other to (a) find the
resource, and (b) refer to the resource in their own works.
Regards,
Alex Satrapa
Karen Coyle wrote:
> At 08:29 PM 11/5/98 -0500, J. Trant wrote:
> >
> >The way I see it, 1:1 is just a case of describing the 'object in hand'.
> >And since there isn't a way of linking repeating elements in DC, it is also
> >the only way to ensure that records make logical sense.
> >
>
> It's kind of hard to talk about the "object in hand" in the digital
> environment; ...
>
> For example,
[I paraphrase as]
- Audio CD, tracks by different composers performed by one or more sets of
artists
- Collection of works of a particular author
- Set of preservation copies (I assume the purpose here is to keep the
intellectual content alive even
though the paper/plastic/metal/etc used to record the content is degerating)
> So the first thing that we have to concede is that the "1" that represents
> the work in the "1:1" is highly variable, and that different communities
> have different definitions for the unit with which they work. We can't
> force them into an artificial atomization of their world; what they do
> makes sense within their context.
[note about some communities only working with heirarchies, rather than
entities]
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