On Wed, 28 Jul 1999, Paul Miller wrote:
> > Yes, it might be *nice* to have this sort of information in the
> > catalog--it would
> > be nice to be able to tell someone where they can buy a copy of a
> > certain book,
> > for instance--but the system is not made for that.
>
> That very much depends upon what 'the system' is... We're not necessarily
> building a library catalogue here, or a museum collection management system,
> or a database of news feeds. We're creating a framework that can be used for
> the *discovery* (and retrieval) of resources.
A couple of thoughts... firstly to re-iterate what Simon said - that this
issue has come up several times and was discussed fairly recently on the
dc-datamodel mailing list.
I think it's fair to say that we are not very clear about functional
requirements here. Not suprising really, because DC will probably be used
to meet many different functional requirements! It is worth noting that
as we move from a 'description of a resource' through to a 'description of
a creator/contributor/publisher associated with that resource' we are
sometimes moving from a 'description of a resource at some point in the
life-cycle of that resource' to a 'description of a
creator/contributor/publisher at the same point in time' and sometimes
moving from a 'description of a resource at some point in the life-cycle
of that resource' to a description of a creator/contributor/publisher now'
(e.g. for contact information). Our current syntaxes do not make this
explicit. In part this is because of our lack of an 'event' based model.
Another problem is that DC will be (is being) used in a variety of
different ways including
- as the basis for embedded metadata
- as the basis for database schema
- as the basis for encoding metadata as it is passed from a server to a
client (e.g. database search results)
and plenty of others. Is 'good practice' the same across these different
usages?
I tend to agree that it is not sensible to place lots of 'white-pages'
(contact) type information into every embedded metadata record separately.
On the other hand, as a (minimal) metadata creator (or metaloger (*)) I do
embed email address into DC records in HTML META tags - it feels useful
even if it isn't! (I also tend to use names in natural order - so perhaps
there's no hope for me!).
Andy
--
UK Office for Library and Information Networking
University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY, UK Voice: +44 1225 323933
www.ukoln.ac.uk/ukoln/staff/a.powell Fax: +44 1225 826838
(*) I can tell you, the word 'metaloger' does not trip easily off the
English tongue, even by email :-)
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