Bernhard Eversberg wrote:
> G. Hannemyr writes:
>> ... nor has any list of "official" qualifiers appeared.
> Does there exist a list of "official" Schemes?
In the context of DC, "no" (which is my point).
[In the rest of the world, tho', I understand there is a lot of it
about :-) -- every profession and group seem to have their own
"official" list of canonical qualifiers. And the plethora
of things that (in a specific context) can be regarded as an
"official" scheme has (it seems) led a lot of good people to
believe that just by invoking a random string such as "LCSH",
software supporting DC shall, as if by magic, recognize this
as a reference to the "Library of Congress Subject Headings"
and do the "right thing(tm)". Unfortunately, all this comes
to grief when a small splinter group at the Miscatonic
University, sharing a firm conviction that this particular set
of initials (LCSH) should refer to the much more (to them)
useful "Lovecraft Classification System for Hagiographies",
mark up their collection and share it with the world by
putting it on the World Wide Web. :-) ]
> Who will serve as maintenance agency for such lists anyway?
I am afraid the answer is: "We don't know". I suspect that it
will be very difficult to find a good answer to this question
(which is also my point).
To me, the the entire area of "qualifiers" look like a minefield.
I am (at the moment) very, very afraid of the consquences of
entering it. If it was up to me, I would have left section 7
out of the [dchtml] document, and just (for the time being) been
content with publishing a document that explained how to encode
DC 1.0 (i.e. DC according to RFC2413) in HTML. But since it is
not up to me, I hope to instead to win appoval for a less radical
proposal, which is to put a "Warning, slippery surface" in section
7 of [dchtml].
Why are qualifiers so dangerous?
Well, if you look at the current practice in the use of qualifiers
-- as eminently documented by the good people of Göttingen:
http://www2.sub.uni-goettingen.de/metaform/
it is fairly evident that the mere existence of a syntax to express
qualification has, at least, led some people to believe that they
are doing the community a service through coming up with inventive
stuff like "DC.Creator.PersonalName.DateOfBirth" -- quite oblivious
to the fact that this makes no sense whatsover outside a small circle
of consenting adults. In fact, this particular invention will
just confuse any software programmed to just look for "DC.Creator.*"
in the (somewhat naďve) belief that using wildcards in this manner
is a good strategy for tackling the plethora of alternate ways of
qualifying identity that the availability of a easy to use qualification
syntax coupled with certain cataloguers fondness for mapping their
pre-existing internal schemas onto the Dublin Core has spurred.
To me, random and free form qualifiers do not make sense in the context
of the Internet. They may make a lot of sense within the closed confines
of an intranet (i.e. within a group who among themselves are able agree
about what qualifiers to use, and what their meaning are), but as the
_Internet_ draft reads, the fact that qualifiers are lesser animals
than the 15 core properties that is named in RFC2413 is not communicated
to the reader at all.
I understand that I am a minority, and that it is now too late to
get completely rid of qualifiers. People are just too fond of the
illusion of expressive power that qualifiers made up at the spur
of the moment provides.
But grant me at least a warning sticker ...
--
- 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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