[Dspace-general] metadata: source and creator

[dp007]

hi all, 
thank you Margret for your prompt reply. and am happy to see that my query has
generated a discussion on this subject. even i tend to agree with Dr. Goodman
and Alfred on this. the basic goal of the DCMI was to give a 'core' set of
metadata that would help in cross-domain search. but if the elements create
ambiguity in usage then it is better they not be included in the core set of
DC or its usage be optional. 
thank you again for your time and help, 
best regards, 
dp.
-----Original Message-----
From: Margret Branschofsky <margretb at MIT.EDU>
Date: 2004/06/21 11:47:36
To: "dp007" <dp007 at coolgoose.com>, dspace-general at MIT.EDU
Cc: 
Subject: Re: [Dspace-general] metadata: source and creator

DSpace uses the Contributor element instead of the Creator element because
this relieves the user of the burden of deciding who, of all the people
involved in the production of an item, is "primarily responsible" in the
creation of the item.  We added roles to contributor, thinking that was more
specific than the vague "creator" field.  So we have Contributor. author,
Contributor.editor, Contributor.illustrator...etc.  And if anyone wants to
leave it vague, they can use the unqualified Contributor field.

Our guide in this decision was the Libraries Application Profile (LAP) of the
Dublin Core, which was in an early draft stage at the time of DSpace
launching.  This draft conflated the Contributor and Creator elements into
one. When the DC Libraries Group published the present draft of the LAP
(officially called DC-Lib), the contributor and creator elements reappeared as
separate elements. However, there is a comment under both of these elements
that states "Creator and Contributor may be conflated if desired by the
application".

We left Creator in our schema only because we anticipated that we might in the
future harvest metadata that contains values in the Creator element, and we
wanted to be able to accept that information.

As time goes by we see that this decision is proving to be somewhat
inconvenient for metadata harvesters.  

As for Source, at the time of DSpace launching the LAP (and also the DCMI)
were counseling people not to use Source because it had been mis-used by some
applications, in their opinion.    Since then I have seen its use being
recommended again, so it might be time for us to change that line in our
guidelines.  This would be fairly simple.  Changing Creator/Contributor would
be more complicated.

This is the historical explanation.  I'd love to hear more comments about how
to proceed in light of developments to date. 

Margret Branschofsky
DSpace User Support Manager
Digital Library Research Group
Bldg. 14S-M24
(617)253-1293
margretb at mit.edu
http://dspace.mit.edu


At 02:48 AM 6/21/2004 +0550, dp007 wrote:
hi all,

dspace recommends not to use the metadata creator and source. it 
says "only for harvested metadata". can anyone explain this?

thanks in advance,
regards,
dp
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Margret Branschofsky
DSpace User Support Manager
Digital Library Research Group
Bldg. 14S-M24
(617)253-1293
margretb at mit.edu
http://dspace.mit.edu 
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