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Explicitly stating the metadata author-agent using the Relation field sounds sane to me, though I'd suggest in this light that metadata authorship is important enough for validating metadata that it should have a field of its own, perhaps DC.MetadataAgent. Whether this actually contains information, or merely points to other information, is a point for debate. For decent quality verification of metadata authorship, the record for a particular metadata author-agent would contain links to all the metadata that this author-agent created. That, or we should have a standard means for recording digital signatures for authored metadata. So the DC.MetadataAgent could contain, say, the link to the author's record and a signature based on the rest of the metadata. I can tell you right now, it's less trouble to implement verification with signatures than cross-links. Using the DC.Relation of IsMetadataAuthorOf/HasMetadataAuthor is going to blow out your data storage. "Is MetadataAuthorOf" is one of those relations that can be explored by finding everything that a particular person is listed as being "HasMetadataAuthor". Unless you only write 500 metadata resources in your life, using two-way linkage is going to be very expensive, in terms of initial storage and continual updates when the location of a resource changes. You're going to need a fast RDBMS just to manage your "IsMetadataAuthorOf" table. If it's possible to keep a global directory of authors, then digital signatures on metadata would be a more sensible option, IMHO (because it means less work for the programmers, which means higher quality software). Regards Alex Satrapa David Bearman wrote: > Dear Andrew, > > I thought I was explicitly NOT proposing that DC metadata do this work. > Rather DC metadata can have relation link to a metadata record created by > another community in which the agents (who might be owners/holders) are > documented. > > I believe that the Recordkeeping community (archives for those readers not > aware of the RMK metadata work) is the most likely community to develop a > full metadata semantic for agents, just as the rightsholding community > (INDECS, for example) is most likely to develop a full metadata semantics > for rights agreements or deals. > > At 08:35 AM 1/22/99 +1100, Andrew Wilson wrote: > >David > > > >Forgive me if this seems naive but aren't custody/ownership and other > >questions relation to provenance more properly the domain of > >recordkeeping metadata, and nothing per se to do with discovery > >metadata? Aren't you trying to get DC to do a lot more than was > >originally intended? > > > >Andrew Wilson > >National Archives of Australia > >Email: [log in to unmask] > >Ph: +61 2 6212 3694 > >Fax: + 61 2 6212 3997 > > > > David Bearman > President > Archives & Museum Informatics > 2008 Murray Ave, Suite D > Pittsburgh, PA 15217 USA > Phone: +1 412 422 8530 > Fax: +1 412 422 8594 > [log in to unmask] > http://www.archimuse.com -- Alex Satrapa tSA Consulting Group Pty Ltd. Canberra, Australia %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%