I forwarded this from Clifford
Carl
-----Original Message-----
From: Clifford Lynch [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, September 29, 1999 5:37 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Rejected [non-member submission] RE: audience, purpose, etc.
this just bounced to dc-general. i thought youd like to see it at
least and if you want to foward it feel free.
clifford
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Amen to Carl's admonition. And I get very nervous about some of the
suggestions I have been reading recently that DC proceed down the
slippery slopes of rights management, for example. Other than a very
small number of statements (not copyrighted, or subject to unlimited,
unrestricted use) I believe that we will find that things get
overwhelmingly complex very quickly. Similarly, there's no question
that audience is helpful for some discovery apps, and virtually
essential for instructional software (hence IMS's emphasis); but in a
general setting, audience could take us down the path of PICS,
filtering, metadata for censorship, etc -- again a very complex batch
of stuff. The question if there are useful general, crosscutting
values. Otherwise, I'd argue for stuffing it into a separate metadata
package (or maybe more than one).
Clifford
>Can we please stop using the term "extension to the Dublin Core"? Can't we
>just accept the notion, which I thought we accepted at the Warwick meeting
>many years ago, which was expressed in the Warwick Framework, and which is
>embodied in the design of RDF, that the DC15 will co-exist with many other
>metadata sets (in separate namespaces)? These other sets are not
extensions
>of DC15 but are co-existing components in a broader metadata universe.
>Somehow we've transformed the DC15 in the past few years from simple
>metadata for basic resource discovery to the keystone from which all
>metadata extends. To paraphrase an old maxim "what's are the three keys to
>a successful metadata effort: scoping, scoping, and scoping".
>
>Carl
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>----
>Carl Lagoze, Digital Library Scientist
>Department of Computer Science, Cornell University
>Ithaca, NY 14853 USA
>Phone: +1-607-255-6046
>FAX: +1-607-255-4428
>E-Mail: [log in to unmask]
>WWW: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/lagoze/lagoze.html
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Robin Wendler [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> > Sent: Wednesday, September 29, 1999 12:53 PM
> > To: Ray Denenberg
> > Cc: DC General
> > Subject: Re: audience, purpose, etc.
> >
> >
> >
> > On Wed, 29 Sep 1999, Ray Denenberg wrote:
> >
> > > Three approaches to accomodating 'audience' have been considered:
> > > (1) Add it as the 16th element.
> > > (2) Wedge it into one of the existing 15 elements: subject,
> > description,
> > > or coverage.
> > > (3) Include it in element sets that are supersets of, or which
> > > "import", DC.
> > >
> > > If 'audience' were a core element, (1) or (2) would be appropriate
> > > (which one, (1) or (2), is beyond the scope of this message) but
> > > assuming that 'audience' is not core, that leaves approach (3),
> > > which is criticized because of the possibility of interoperability
> > > problems caused by the potential proliferation of
> > 'audience' elements
> > > in different element sets.
> >
> > Let me add that option 2 has interoperability problems as
> > well, just of a
> > different nature. For example, given the spatio-temporal definition of
> > Coverage, if you stick audience in it, you will have violated
> > the commonly
> > understood semantics of the element, causing it to lose its
> > meaning. This
> > diminishes interoperability.
> >
> > Not every data element each of us requires, nor even every
> > data element
> > many of us require, needs to be shoehorned into DC. Let's
> > work on common
> > extensions rather than stretch the existing elements out of
> > recognition.
> > If you have to hunt this hard for a place to stuff it, it
> > probably belongs
> > in an extension.
> >
> > --Robin
> >
> > Robin Wendler ........................ work (617) 495-3724
> > Office for Information Systems ....... fax (617) 495-0491
> > Harvard University Library ........... [log in to unmask]
> > Cambridge, MA, USA 02138 .............
> >
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