David Bearman wrote:
>
> I'm concerned about the examples given for physical objects because I think
> they support the confusion between the object of the metadata and the
> subject of the metadata that prevails already.
>
> Dublin Core metadata describes resources on the net.
I was under the impression that this restriction had been relaxed.
Dublin Core metadata decribes "resources" ... the "strategic
application" or domain is the net, but in principle it could
be used for other resources. The "optionality" of the
DC.Identifier element, for example, supports this.
> As such it could
> describe real people and real computers but I'm not sure that it could
> describe the great pyramid, sculpture or wheat on the net. If these are on
> the net, they are there as representations - either in text, image, data,
> interactives etc.
I believe that we would describe digital representations
of these resources as "image", possibly "data", "text" etc,
but we can also describe the objects/substances themselves
as "physical object" if it were useful to include them in
some catalog or knowledge-system using DC semantics if desired.
The digital representations and the original objects would be
associated through DC.Relation elements, etc.
> If you see the problem, perhaps changing the examples would do it by
> itself. Perhaps a note needs to accompany these physical object types to
> explain when to use them. If we don't, we'll get lots of pictures of
> buildings and people described as physical objects.
Yes - you might be correct that the examples here do not fully illustrate this distinction. But I wonder if such explicit
coaching belongs, rather, in the User Guide? Maybe both!
--
__________________________________________________
Dr Simon Cox - Australian Geodynamics Cooperative Research Centre
CSIRO Exploration & Mining, PO Box 437, Nedlands, WA 6009 Australia
T: +61 8 9389 8421 F: +61 8 9389 1906 [log in to unmask]
http://www.ned.dem.csiro.au/SimonCox/
|