G. Hannemyr observed:
>
> Now, human readers will of course be able to make sense of the
> additional information conveyed through the many creative uses
> of the dot notation exemplified above, but _computers_ will not,
> unless they beforehand are explicitly programmed to understand
> the semantics of each and every usage made of the dot notation.
> ...
> My argument, therefore, is that at present, the issues regarding use
> of the dot notation is not sufficiently resolved for it to be of
> value outside the particular organization that has come up with a
> particular usage of it, and that its use should be discouraged within
> the framework of DCHTML until it has become better resolved.
>
Isn't it quite curious that all those tags are formulated in natural
language, as if to enable human readers to understand them. That's not
the primary objective. No one is supposed to write these labels by hand
either, it is all supposed to happen through the interpretation of
software front ends. As that happens, human-readability becomes
meaningless, a liability rather than an asset.
Those natural language labels not only make metadata ever uglier and
bulkier (you don't see the data any more among all the tagging), they can
even, as G.H. observes, become unintelligible for robots. I repeat what I
sais several times: Scrap all this, use abstract, well-defined notations
like MARC. All the extensions, or most of them, put forth in this list and
elsewhere, are already catered for in MARC or easy to add by way of
indicators or subfield codes. Then just make a simple "user-defined"
addition to XML and use it to embed plain ASCII MARC data.
MARC is cryptic? It is not for human readers either. Intelligent front ends
that already *exist* can conceal it from everybody. They can even, on
the surface, put up labels like "DC.Creator.PersonalName" for you. But
then store this as "100".
(3 bytes as opposed to 23. I don't think anybody cares, but that *is* 7
times more bytes than necessary. Sorry, I'm one of the old school,
and I do think at least someone has to point this out. It is *not* the
reason I resent DC taggings. And BTW, RDF/XML makes that worse.)
If things go on like this, it will all end in an awful mess. Sometimes
I think we already have it. (And I do not see RDF/XML as a panacea either)
Besides, there are countless human readers (called catalogers) who are
well able to read MARC and who use it all the time. It is not as if I
suggested something otherworldly.
Just my opinion. Or not? Even Alex Satrapa writes:
> Do we *need* these specialisations? Aren't they just adding unneccesary
> complication to DC? The more specific you get in your Metatagging, the
> closer you're bringing DC to MARC, and the less reason you really have
> to try using DC instead of MARC.
Right on!
B.E.
And BTW: DC-Labels are not natural language. They are English. For us, this
language is quite unnatural ;-) Numbers are neutral.
B.E.
Bernhard Eversberg
Universitaetsbibliothek, Postf. 3329,
D-38023 Braunschweig, Germany
Tel. +49 531 391-5026 , -5011 , FAX -5836
e-mail [log in to unmask]
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|