On Wed, 4 Nov 1998, Kent Fitch wrote:
> I'm part of a team about to embark on a metadata crusade
> and an issue has come up which maybe others have resolved.
>
> There are many cases where metadata is entered against
> a "container" document and not against the "child"
> documents. Eg, a long report may be published on the
> web with an introduction and table of contents at:
>
> http://x/report/index.html
>
> and chapters at:
>
> http://x/report/chapter1.html
> http://x/report/chapter2.html
> http://x/report/chapter3.html etc
>
> The DC metadata (author, publisher, language, <I>agent</I>...)
> would conveniently be entered once against the "index.html".
>
> DC relation metadata could link the chapters and the
> "index.html" (HasPart, IsPartOf).
>
> However:
>
> 1) I'm not clear how any metadata entered against a "child" meshes
> or mixes with metadata of the "parent". For example, would
> subject keywords specified in the child augment or replace
> those of the parent? What about a language specification?
>
> 2) It would often be useful to perform a combined metadata field
> and free text search - eg, documents containing the phrase
> "ice cream" in their body authored by "Mary". However, when the
> author information and body are stored 'against' different
> resources this becomes much more difficult.
>
> A possible solution is to maintain replicated metadata in the child
> documents; another is use a very smart (and slow?) search engine
> that understands the DC relation semantics.
>
> What experiences have others had in this area?
>
> Kent Fitch Ph: +61 2 6276 6711
> ITS CSIRO Canberra Australia [log in to unmask]
> "Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is
> supposed to be doing." - Robert Benchley
In the DONOR project (http://www.konbib.nl/donor/index-en.html)
we propose to let children inherit the metadata of the parent, but only
when the child itself doesn't have any metadata (except the relation
element of course). When the child has any other metadata than relation no
metadata are inherited from the parent, and of course this means as well
that any metadata of the child overrule those of the parent.
Those choises are based on what seemed feasible to the people who will
have to build the DONOR index and query interface.
See also:
http://www.konbib.nl/donor/rapporten/granularity.html
under: 4.2 Recommendations
We are still in the planning stages, and I must say that we hadn't
thought yet about the second problem you mention (combined full text and
metadata search). I'll forward your mail to our project-techies, see what
they think.
Regards,
Marianne Peereboom
Koninklijke Bibliotheek (National Library of the Netherlands),
library research department
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Marianne Peereboom Koninklijke Bibliotheek
phone +31 70 3140489 PO Box 90407
fax +31 70 3140501 NL-2509 LK The Hague
email: [log in to unmask] The Netherlands
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