In reply to Alex Satrapa [Subject: Re: a vote for authority control?] (1999-04-20 at 15:37)
>
> The "best" place (I use that term with reservation) to store contact information
> for an author in a DC system, is in the DC Metadata about the author. Perhaps we
> may decide that a suitable kludge is to store contact information in (the
> metadata for?) a biographic article. This biographic article could be an "web
> accessible autobiographic notation" (aka Home Page), containing the usual
> information such as birth date, employment history, work history,
> qualifications, contact details (phone, fax, postal mail, telex, etc) ad
> nauseum.
>
As has been said before contact details don't usually relate
to the object the metadata is describing. Much as when I use Identifier
to point to a web page I don't include the last modification time because
that data is available via the page itself. Contact data should be
available through another service and be referenced by the Creator field.
Directory services are the usual route for this, for example
the Creator field could be a LDAP URN. With services such as the four11
directory and the fact that modern email clients such as netscape and
eudora use directories for their adress books, this seems to me to
be the natural way to provide access to discover contact details.
Use the right tool for the job, don't try and fit everything
into one system. Contact details are not on the whole considered
metadata (generally - don't shout) and should be serviced through a
system designed to hold this data with a pointer in the Creator field.
-Mark
--
Mark Cheverton [log in to unmask]
Hypereality Systems Ltd http://www.hypereality.co.uk/
Internet Content Solution Providers
http://www.squash.org/ http://www.equity-invest.com/
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