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Note: the last posting held the incorrect URL. Below is the correct URL. The Coverage Element working draft is available for you to read at: http://www.alexandria.ucsb.edu/public-documents/metadata/dc_coverage.html The members of the group who began working on this soon after DC4 are: hans Becker; Arthur Chapman; Andrew Daviel; karen Kaye; Mary Larsgaard (co-chair); Paul Miller; Doug Nebert (co-chair); Andrew Prout; Misha Wolf. Special thanks to Jennifer Trant for some art-world examples; Jennifer, please recommend others as appropriate. We would appreciate receiving examples of applications of the Coverage element for Internet resources in the field of medicine. Following are some discussion points that have been brought up in the group: a. There is some feeling that Coverage should be used only for what might be termed non-fiction works - for example, a scanned map of Montana - and not for such works as a novel that takes place in Montana. It would be difficult to explain this difference to Webpage users, and I suggest we keep Coverage for any sort of spatial or temporal coverage, rather than say, sometimes it's Coverage and sometimes it's Subject or Keyword. Or, to put it another way, that Coverage be used only for certain aspects. For example - a ceramic pot; should Coverage - Spatil refer to where the pot were made, or where it were found? I suggest that since it is a repeatable field, one may have a Coverage field for each of these. b. There is a viewpoint that Coverage is a type of Subject or Keyword and should be subsumed under that element. This is a topic that catalogers in libraries have been arguing about for years - that is, whether geographic area is a subject or not. It is included in subject headings; but it is dealt with as a separate type of heading from thematic headings. For example, in USMARC, thematic terms (e.g., Geology; Anthrpology; etc.), geographic terms, and chronologic terms are each given different field codes; these are usually $x for thematic, $z for geographic, and $y for chronologic headings. The References area needs some work done on it; I decided it was best to wait until we had a complete list of references needed, and then to get it into shape. Over to you all for comment. Mary Larsgaard Alexandria Digital Library/Davidson Library University of California Santa Barbara CA USA