RE: 'Guidelines for implementing DC in XML'
Recommendation 6 indicates that Element refinements should be treated in the same way as other properties (see below for the full recommendation).
I have two questions:
(1) Why?
(2) Has this approach been widely adopted? (specifically in governments?)
Note 1 of the document shows that some implementers prefer to represent the relationship within the metadata records rather than elsewhere. This is a logical preference given that it is simpler and more intuitive. Why are the two options in the presented not recommended?
For example: The Government of Ontario (GO) Web Metadata Standard has a refinement of Contributor called Editor. In HTML it is expressed <meta name="dc.contributor.editor" content=""/>. This recommendation says that in XML it would be: <go:editor></go:editor>. This seems counter-intuitive because you are losing the fact that editor refines the DC element contributor.
Excerpt from the Guidelines:
Recommendation 6. Element refinements should be treated in the same way as other properties. The name of the XML element should be an XML qualified name (QName) which associates the element refinement name with the appropriate DCMI namespace name. For example:
<dcterms:available>2002-06</dcterms:available>
Element refinements are elements in their own right and are therefore best encoded in a similar way to other DC elements. In particular, it should be noted that element refinements may have further refinements of their own (e.g. 'format' is refined by 'extent' which might be further refined by 'duration').
See also Note 1 below.
[Note 1] Recommendation 6 assumes that it is not required that Qualified Dublin Core metadata records include explicit information on the relationships between refinements and the elements they refine. Such relationships are well documented elsewhere and may be expressed in machine understandable ways in schema definitions.
Some implementors, however, prefer to represent this relationship within metadata records.
Some suggest the use of a 'refines' attribute. For example:
<dcterms:alternative refines="dc:title">foo</dcterms:alternative>
Others suggest using element containment, with XML elements representing refinements nested within XML elements representing the elements they refine. For example
<dc:title>
<dcterms:alternative>foo</dcterms:alternative>
</dc:title>
Neither of these approaches is recommended by these guidelines. However, it may be sensible for software applications that consume DCQ in XML to accept either of these alternative representations, assuming it is correctly and consistently applied.
Thank you,
MaryAnn Welke
Enterprise Metadata Coordinator
Corporate Architecture and Standards Branch
Ministry of Government Services, Government of Ontario
Ferguson Block, 8th Floor
77 Wellesley St. W
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M7A 1N3
Ph: 416-212-0702
Fx: 416-327-3347
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