[Dspace-general] dc.format

[Ingrid Mason]

Hi Beth,

My knowledge of this is scrappy, but here goes.

DSpace records in the DBMS the mimetype of the files ingested, so this
type of 'data' and metadata is already in the system.  

But, one of the good reasons to record dc.format.mimetype is that you
can search/sort and know *exactly* what mimetypes you have in the GUI,
because if it's in the metadata you can find it easily, for whatever
reason.  

It starts to get 'interesting' when you have more than 1 object
associated with your item record though:  

e.g a thesis with a dataset:

dc.format.mimetype = application/pdf 
dc.format.mimetype = application/octet-stream 

It seems obvious that the mimetypes are respectively the thesis and
dataset, but who knows?  In some way, it might be important to know
which is which, which means indicating this in the metadata.  Maybe add
an XML file outlining which file is which?  Plenty of people are fine
about just listing them and letting the searcher piece their way through
this.  

We have chosen not to implement dc.format to avoid this.  We didn't see
that that many users would search for file format and the file extension
indicates the mimetype in the UI.  It may come back to bite us later on,
if for example it is really important for searchers to know what
mimetypes are available (for compatibility with software applications).
Or, with a view to undertaking preservation interventions/migrations.
But, hopefully they would be done via the 'back end' (DBMS) rather than
through the metadata anyway.   

Hope this helps.  

Ingrid 

Ingrid Mason
Digital Research Repository Coordinator
Victoria University of Wellington
New Zealand = Aotearoa




-----Original Message-----
From: dspace-general-bounces at mit.edu
[mailto:dspace-general-bounces at mit.edu] On Behalf Of Beth Tillinghast
Sent: Saturday, 14 July 2007 12:38 p.m.
To: dspace-general at mit.edu
Subject: [Dspace-general] dc.format

Aloha,

I have a question about an element's use in the metadata schema for 
our DSpace instance. I notice many, but not all, DSpace instances use 
the dc.format.extent and the dc.format.mimetype elements and 
qualifiers. I am curious if there is a best-practices reason for this 
other than a nice-to-know reason. Can this information be used to 
generate certain reports, for example?

Thank you in advance for your responses,
Beth

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