On Fri, 23 Feb 2001, Stefan Kokkelink wrote:
> That sounds like a precise and simple definition. So
> the dumb-down of
>
> <dc:subject>
> <rdf:value>12dget4564</rdf:value>
> <rdfs:isDefinedBy>some strange schema</rdfs:isDefinedBy>
> <dc:subject>
>
> is '12dget4564'? If this is recommended as best practice,
> I don't see what do we gain by this? (But, I am quite new
> to this, so please be forgiving ;-)
The idea is that one should ask whether the strings are "useful for
resource discovery" even in the absence of qualifiers. In this case,
the string "12dget4564" would seem to be pretty useless as a piece of
information unless you know where it comes from. So if this "some
strange schema" were to be proposed to the Usage Board for
certification as a Encoding Scheme qualifier, I would vote against it.
The idea is not to say that every subject heading or classification
scheme in the world should go into dc:subject -- just the ones that
seem useful for discovery. Instead of dc:subject, in this case, one
could use an element like <my-app:sss>, where my-app is a namespace
other than dc.
One counter-example is "Languages -- Phonetics", which is a useful
string for indexing and discovery even if you do not know it comes from
the Library of Congress Subject Headings.
An intermediate example is Dewey Decimal Classification, which was
approved as qualifier because (in my recollection) the text labels are
useful strings even if the decimal numbers themselves are not helpful
in their unqualified form.
Tom
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Dr. Thomas Baker [log in to unmask]
GMD Library
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