[OAI-implementers] Reconsidering mandatory DC in OAI-PMH
Matthew Cockerill
matt@biomedcentral.com
Tue, 5 Aug 2003 14:00:31 +0100
The Dublin Core spec page says:
http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/
'The Dublin Core metadata element set is a standard for cross-domain
information resource description. Here an information resource is defined to
be "anything that has identity". '
i.e. the point about Dublin Core is that it is not tied to a specific
semantic domain.
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/resources/dc/datamodel/WD-dc-rdf/
Re: RSS - RSS seems to be a bit of morass of competing approaches right now,
but my understanding is that Dublin Core is fairly central to most proposals
for enriching the semantics of RSS.
e.g. http://web.resource.org/rss/1.0/modules/dc/
I would argue that enforcing a baseline set of cross-domain metadata
semantics is *as* important an aspect of the OAI-PMH project as is the
protocol itself.
(Although certainly, the two could be thought of as logically distinct
sub-projects]
Matt
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sandro Zic [mailto:sandro.zic@zzoss.com]
> Sent: 05 August 2003 12:36
> To: Matthew Cockerill
> Cc: oai-implementers@oaisrv.nsdl.cornell.edu
> Subject: RE: RE : [OAI-implementers] Reconsidering mandatory DC in
> OAI-PMH
>
>
> Zitat von Matthew Cockerill <matt@biomedcentral.com>:
> > But it still seems to be that having a baseline metadata
> standard that *all*
> > OAI providers must implement is an *extremely* useful aspect of the
> > protocol.
>
> It is, but only where useful :) Think of OAI-PMH in the
> Weblogging world, to
> do some sophisticated RSS harvesting. DC is not used there,
> instead they
> disucss about RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, RDF-based RSS, Echo, etc. to
> achieve metadata
> interoperability.
>
> OAI-PMH is very powerful as a generic protocol for metadata
> harvesting, it
> should not IMHO concentrate on metadata interoperability, instead on
> interoperability on the protocol level. Finding standards for
> metadata
> exchange on the metadata level should not be a concern of
> OAI-PMH as metadata
> is bound to the semantic domain where OAI-PMH is being used.
>
> Sandro
>
> > e.g. It is currently possible to build tools which will
> browse an arbitrary
> > repository, and list the titles of the new items which were
> added to the
> > repository that day. If you remove the support for Dublin
> Core metadata,
> > then even such a simple task would become impossible (right ?).
> >
> > Does it really follow that removing the requirement for
> Dublin Core support
> > would increase the support for other, richer formats?
> Surely the two things
> > are independent,
> >
> > Matt
> >
> > ==
> > Matthew Cockerill Ph.D.
> > Technical Director
> > BioMed Central Limited (http://www.biomedcentral.com)
> > 34-42, Cleveland Street
> > London W1T 4LB
> >
> > Tel. +44 20 7631 9127
> > Fax. +44 20 7580 1938
> > Email. matt@biomedcentral.com
> >
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Martin Sevigny [mailto:sevigny@ajlsm.com]
> > > Sent: 05 August 2003 12:25
> > > To: oai-implementers@oaisrv.nsdl.cornell.edu
> > > Subject: RE : [OAI-implementers] Reconsidering mandatory
> DC in OAI-PMH
> > >
> > >
> > > > Carl Lagoze wrote
> > >
> > > > 2. The linkage between Dublin Core and OAI-PMH has been
> > > > over-emphasized
> > > > at the expense of the utility of OAI-PMH for dissemination
> > > of richer,
> > > > and perhaps more useful, structured data. In some cases data
> > > > providers
> > > > with richer metadata (e.g., MARC, IEEE LOM) have been
> forced by the
> > > > requirement to dumb-down rich metadata to Dublin Core
> and have then
> > > > failed to provide the original metadata. As a result,
> the community
> > > > looses the benefits of rich data and is left with the reduced
> > > > semantics
> > > > of Dublin Core.
> > >
> > > I do strongly agree with this statement. Many times, I had to
> > > go back at
> > > the basics and try to convince people tha OAI-PMH could
> > > transport other
> > > XML data structures then DC.
> > >
> > > This strong association has been of great importance in
> the early and
> > > rapid adoption of OAI, because it (may) remove the burden of
> > > agreeing on
> > > data structure for exchange. But I think that since this
> first step in
> > > the adoption of OAI is now done, it would not cause too
> much harm to
> > > remove this constraint.
> > >
> > > > generalization. Although removing the Dublin Core
> > > > requirement would not
> > > > negatively impact existing or future data providers, it
> may impact
> > > > service providers whose applications depend on the
> existence of a
> > > > uniform metadata format.
> > >
> > > This is the main drawback of it. I personnaly believe
> that in a real
> > > distributed, multilingual, multivocabulary environment
> (very realistic
> > > today), the benefits of having a common model as limited as
> > > Dublin Core
> > > are not that important.
> > >
> > > > 1. Change the Dublin Core requirement to a recommendation.
> > >
> > > Agreed.
> > >
> > > > 2. Leave oai_dc as a reserved metadataPrefix
> > >
> > > Yes, it should.
> > >
> > > > 3. Move the oai_dc part of protocol document to Implementation
> > > > Guidelines
> > >
> > > OK.
> > >
> > > Martin Sévigny
> > > AJLSM
> > > sevigny@ajlsm.com
> > >
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> >
> >
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