James Weinheimer wrote:
> Gisle Hannemyr wrote:
>> Hmmm, I must admit that it has never occurred to me that a _user_
>> (i.e. someone who is trying to discover whether this particular
>> resource exists somewhere on the world wide web) should ever see
>> the metadata record.
> If I understand you correctly, when someone makes a search, they will
> receive only the URL?
No, that is not what I mean. I only meant that human users should
never see the "raw" metadata record (or at least, that the provision¨
that human users should see and be able to make sense of this "raw"
record should not be a requirement determining the design or usage
of the metadata record).
What use the computer makes of this record is up to the designer of
the particular computer system. He or she _might_ design the system
to retrieve only the URL, or he/she might make the computer parse the
metadata record and extract and display all sort of useful information
embedded in the metadata.
But I make the provision that the human user only sees the data
indirectly (i.e. mediated by the computer), and that the computer
should only mediate what it believes make sense. This provision
filters out all relations "enriched" with pseudo-natural-language
qualifiers that the computer has not been explicitly programmed to
recognise.
> I would hope that the searcher retrieves more,
> i.e. enough to be able to make a determination as to the contents of the
> item.
> I feel there needs to be more information to display to the searcher: at
> least the title, description, creator(s). Relation makes sense only if
> it is displayed.
Agreed, but these are user requirements that should be imposed on the
computer system _making_use_of_ the DC metadata record. They are not
requirements on the DC framework as such (as long as the framework is
powerful enough to support this type of end user design).
> I don't feel that we should worry about present limitations of the
> search engines. If we want to label the fields separately, we should do
> so; and the technicians should deal with it. If we don't want to label
> the fields separately, so be it.
> MARC can handle these distinctions, and that system is over 30 years
> old.
Well, as a technician, I worry (a lot)!
MARC has created and specified a very detailed framework to handle
these distinctions, based upon a stringent and detailed coding system.
The DCI has not. It has created a set consisting of 15 core properties
(this is good) and a syntax that allow cataloguers to express all sort
of complex relations (MARC-like and non-MARC-like) in pseudo-natural
language (this, IMHO, is bad). Making computers understand this sort of
pseudo-natural language is very difficult -- much more difficult than
interpreting a completely specified coding system like MARC).
MARC works because its cataloguers are trained experts, working in a
controlled environment where professional standards are set and
supervised.
Most of the people that will put metadata on the web will not have any
type of formal training as cataloguers. They will take whatever tools
and guidance we provide (hopefully) and some of them will try to do a
job faithful to the spirit of the DCI. Others will use the same tools
to create index spam.
>> Who is the primary "user" of the metadata record?
>> And if the answer is "both":
>> Is there or isn't there a conflict in the requirements?
> There are many users of the metadata record, just as there are many
> users of our present day catalog records. Catalog records are flexible
> enough to meet the challenges--I think the metadata should be just as
> flexible, if not more so.
Our present day catalogue records is flexible because they are interpreted
and processed by human users who (compared to computers) are extremely
flexible and versatile entities.
You can get the same kind of flexibilty in the metadata record by
letting them be interpreted and processed by human users -- but I
fear that such a design requirement will usually render them
unintelligible to computer interpretation.
--
- gisle hannemyr ( [log in to unmask] - http://home.sol.no/home/gisle/ )
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"Use the Source, Luke. Use the Source." -- apologies to Obi-Wan Kenobi
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