No comment on DCMI Point - seems a long time ago now.

Looking at the DRIVER Guidelines, they appear to be based very closely on the DC usage guidelines at http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/#terms-coverage which now says:

Spatial topic and spatial applicability may be a named place or a location specified by its geographic coordinates. Temporal topic may be a named period, date, or date range. A jurisdiction may be a named administrative entity or a geographic place to which the resource applies. Recommended best practice is to use a controlled vocabulary such as the Thesaurus of Geographic Names [TGN]. Where appropriate, named places or time periods can be used in preference to numeric identifiers such as sets of coordinates or date ranges.

though DRIVER is probably based on the older version.

I probably had a hand in writing both version though I have no idea what we meant by "where appropriate, named places or time periods *can* be used in preference to numeric identifiers" in the current form - the 'can' bit seems completely useless to me.  If we meant 'should', we should have said so!  Whatever... my interpretation is that the current DC guidelines are more hospitable to the use of coordinates than the current DRIVER guidelines.

I disagree slightly with James' original point about ambiguity - presumably TGN does have a way of disambiguating Longon, UK from London, Canada, so that, on it's own, isn't necessarily a reason for moving to use of coordinates.

Historically, I think DC had a preference for text strings rather than numeric strings because there tended to be an assumption that end-user search terms would need to map directly on to the values supplied in the metadata and people couldn't really conceptualise how coordinates could be made to work in the context of simple Web searching.  I'm not sure that applies (or has ever applied) but I suspect that is where the original guidance came from.

Andy
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Repositories discussion list 
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Garret McMahon
> Sent: 03 February 2009 11:02
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: BioGeomancer & Best Geo-Practices RE: coverage- 
> geo treatment by DRIVER
> 
> James,
> 
> No definite answers here but I did see Andy Powell's name 
> listed as a contributor to the DCMI Point Encoding Scheme [ 
> http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-point/ ].
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Garret McMahon
> Trinity College Dublin
> 
> 2009/2/2 Falk Huettmann <[log in to unmask]>:
> > ...interesting point.
> >
> >
> >
> > GBIF (for Global Biodiversity) uses an automated (global) 
> tool called 
> > BioGeomancer.
> >
> >
> >
> > http://www.biogeomancer.org/
> >
> >
> >
> > http://www.gbif.org/Search/search?find_string=biogeomancer
> >
> >
> >
> > It's not entirely an answer to your question, but has geo-name 
> > databases underneath
> >
> > that address some of your questions. I am not sure whether they use 
> > some that you mentioned.
> >
> >
> >
> > The idea of fuzziness, use of an error ellipse, is implemented in 
> > BioGeomancer though.
> >
> >
> >
> > There is also a BEST PRACTICES document with GBIF to 
> geo-referencing 
> > and for free download.
> >
> > I like that one a lot as a general standard.
> >
> >
> >
> > The closer we get to similar geo-names and concepts the better.
> >
> >
> >
> > Please keep me posted.
> >
> >
> >
> > Very best
> >
> >      F.
> >
> >
> >
> > Falk Huettmann PhD, Assistant Professor
> >
> > -EWHALE lab- Biology and Wildlife Dept., Institute of Arctic Biology
> >
> > 419 IRVING I, University of Alaska Fairbanks AK 99775-7000 USA
> >
> > Email [log in to unmask]  Phone 907 474 7882 Fax 907 474 6716
> >
> >
> >
> > ________________________________
> >
> > From: Repositories discussion list 
> > [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> > On Behalf Of James S Reid
> > Sent: Monday, February 02, 2009 4:07 AM
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: DC:coverage- geo treatment by DRIVER
> >
> >
> >
> > Could somebody on the list shed some light on why the DRIVER 
> > guidelines state that for DC:Coverage the " Recommended 
> best practice 
> > is to select the value from a controlled vocabulary (for 
> example, the 
> > Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names or TGN) and that, where 
> > appropriate, named places or time periods be used in preference to 
> > numeric identifiers as, for example, sets of co- ordinates or date 
> > ranges. If necessary, repeat this element to encode 
> multiple locations or periods."
> >
> > This is at odds with what we have been encouraging for  years 
> > (favouring explicit georeferencing via no-ambiguous coordinate 
> > referencing) as part of having the JISC IE georeferenced 
> and indeed is 
> > guaranteed to provide ambiguity e.g. the placename 'london' 
> is not non-ambigous were as N 51° 30'
> > 30''W 0° 7' 31'' is (this is the UK London as opposed to 
> the Canadian 
> > one at N 42° 59' 0''W 81° 13' 58' ).
> >
> > See also our GAP work -
> > 
> http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/index/Geospatial_Applicati
> > on_Profile
> >
> > ??
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > James S Reid
> >
> > EDINA (Geoservices)
> >
> > Uniiversity of Edinburgh
> >
> >
> >
> > tel:+44 (0) 131 651 1383
> >
> > mob:        0759 5116988
> >
> >
> >
> > "Walking down the road
> >
> > With a blade in your waist
> >
> > Johnny you're too bad, Johnny you're too bad"
> >
> >
> >
> > John Martyn 11th September 1948 - 29th January 2009
> >
> >
>