[OAI-implementers] service provider grouping of metadata elements

[Riley, Jenn]

Hello all-

I'm part of a group within the Digital Library Federation writing a set
of Best Practices for shareable metadata via OAI. One of our goals is to
develop best practices for specific classes of metadata elements, rather
than writing them for elements in any specific metadata schema (e.g.,
DC). But first we need to define those classes.

I'd like to ask OAI service providers out there what metadata elements
you combine together for searching or browsing, in order to help us
define what higher-level element classes we should be describing. Do
you, for example, combine dc.creator, dc.contributor, and dc.publisher
into a single index (And what do you call it?)? Pull temporal values
from dc.coverage and index them together with dc.date? Put dc.title,
dc.description, and dc.subject together for a "title"-ish index? What
combinations do you currently use and what have you considered but don't
currently implement? If you're harvesting metadata in something other
than DC, or using something other than DC on your SP back end, we'd be
interested in hearing about elements you combine from these schemas as
well. 

Thanks in advance for the feedback - I look forward to seeing what
people out there are doing.

Jenn

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Jenn Riley
Metadata Librarian
Digital Library Program
Indiana University - Bloomington
Main Library E170
(812) 856-5759
www.dlib.indiana.edu