Jean-Francois Gauvin wrote:
> We are currently trying to implement a DC metadata package for thesis and
> dissertation. There are a few elements of importance relating to theses
> metadata that we can't fit in DC. Such elements as jury members and
> faculty/department name.
>
> In order to be "DC compliant", how do we create local extensions?
>
> <META name="DC.Faculty" CONTENT="Faculty of Arts">
>
> or simply
>
> <META name="Faculty" CONTENT="Faculty of Arts">
Neighther of these is a good idea. The "DC." prefix should only be
used for things that are actually are defined as Dublin Core
(i.e. the 15 named elements of RFC2413, and the one without
prefix doesn't scale -- somebody else comes along and decide they
also need a element named "Faculty", but disagree with your semantics
(or just doesn't know about you), and things are bound to get messy.
This is how I do it: The fragment below is from a document that
mixes a Dublin Core element "Creator" with a local extension
"Proglanguage":
<LINK rel="schema.DC" href="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.0/">
<LINK rel="schema.FAST" href="http://www.ifi.uio.no/~gisle/fast/meta.html">
<META NAME="DC.Creator" CONTENT="Bob Smith">
<META NAME="FAST.Proglanguage" CONTENT="Java">
Two things are important to note.
The first is the use of the link tag to declare a schema assocaiated
with a particular prefix. I associate the "DC." prefix with the
standard Dublin Core Schema, and my own "FAST." prefix with my own
schema.
The second is that when introducing the local extension, (i,e.
"Proglanguage" element), it is written "FAST.Proglanguage".
This prevents it from being confused by an element with the
same name invented by someone else.
The declaration of a schema has the advantage that even if somebody
else fancied the "FAST." prefix, there would be no ambiguity. As
long as they also made proper use of the link tag to associate the
prefix with a particular schema, by having something like this in
their web page:
<LINK rel="schema.FAST" href="http://some.body.else/s.html">
... my data capture routine scanning for metadata would understand
that in this web-page, any use of "FAST." do not use "my" prefix
-- but somebody else's.
--
- 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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