If a photograph was taken in 1968, and digitised in 2005, and uploaded into a repository in 2007, is it appropriate to export all three of these dates in the unqualified dc:date field? [Originally asked by Gordon on December 24, 2008, on www.digitalnz.org]
Need some advice on any aspect of digitisation or digital content creation? Ask your questions in this forum... or jump in with your own answers to other peoples questions.
Comments
Good question! We consulted with a fellow National Library staff member, who is also a member of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative’s Advisory Board. His opinion was as follows:
“You should include just the creation date – unless you (or Digital New Zealand) has good reasons for other dates to appear or Digital New Zealand can segregate multiple date types.” (which we currently can’t).
The reasoning behind this opinion relates to the purpose of Dublin Core metadata (to facilitate discovery of electronic resources), and a need to prioritise information that is most ‘useful’ for resource discovery.
“To me, the most useful date is 1968 – general users searching for it are less likely to be interested in when it was digitised or made available online.”
There is a long answer too, which relates to the ‘one-to-one’ principle of applying Dublin Core metadata, and a philosophy of ‘thinking like a user’.
Long answer
Dublin Core describes a one-to-one relationship between the record and the object that is being described. So we need to ask ‘is the record describing the original or the digitised version’?
In the Dublin Core Abstract Model, there would be two description records: one for the original (the photograph taken in 1968) and one for the digitised version – then the dates are in separate descriptions.
But when both of these are brought together in a single record, you need to make decisions – and in this case, we suggest you err towards what users are trying to discover.
From our resident metadata specialist:
“There is nothing preventing the other dates also being included, but it seems to me it just muddies the information for little benefit. Maybe these could be added to the description (eg “digitised by X in 2000”?). I would argue the date uploaded isn’t really related to describing the resource, rather it is an admin function about the record."
Another consideration, particularly relevant to the goals of Digital New Zealand, is that in many cases the date created is also the copyright date for the content. A good date to be aware of if you want to re-use content without breaking the law.
Hope this helps. If you want to talk about it more, feel free to use the comments function.
Helpful info thanks Virgina
What about a digitized photograph of another creative object such as a building or sculpture? Sometimes it is difficult to imagine what the viewer is most interested in – are they looking at the architect’s work or the architectural photographers?
Ah yes, THAT question. The first discussion was about dates of creation versus other dates that are more related to changes to accessing the thing (ie. digitisation and release online) – it is easier to ignore these other dates when you are focussing on resource discovery. However this second question raises that other curly question of different types of creation dates.
This is also an ongoing topic of discussion amongst the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. For example with a photograph of a building, if the building was built in 1960 but the photo was taken in 1980, what you put in the creation date field depends on whether you are describing the building or the photograph. They are both valid points of view in resource discovery – photographers may be looking for photos from the 80s whereas architects may be looking for pictures of building from the 60s.
I guess the one-to-one principle would still valiantly come to the rescue here. Ideally you would create a record describing the building then link it to (or embed it in) another record describing the photo of the building. Then a search for ‘created by Ans Westra’ or ‘created by Athfield Architects’ will both find the photo. Um, except that no-one ever bothers doing this! They just munge the metadata all together… thus killing any hope of creating the Semantic Web :)
One practical response might be to make the structured fields less of a muddled combination. So, choose what you are describing (eg. the photo), describe just that (eg. date taken, photographer, etc), then add in the other useful aspects just as extra keywords into subject/coverage fields rather than the creator/date/etc fields (eg. 1960s building, Athfield Architects).
Hi Gregreser I see that there is previous question from Gordon about dcdate so here’s an attempt at answering both your comment and Gordon’s!
For Gordon’s comment – Dublin Core metadata is resource discovery metadata so you can export any “date” (and if appropiate more than one) that you consider would be useful for resource discovery so Gordon you could export both the 1968 and 2005 date if you wish. The 2007 date is more like administrative type metadata telling you something about the metadata record itself and not the resource so therefore not really appropriate for export to dc:date.
Many metadata schemes have more specific meanings or granularity for their “element” descriptions than Dublin Core (elements can be also known as terms and attributes). These more granular metadata schemes often have many more elements than DC and are used mainly within subject domains, like say, archives. For these more granular metadata schemes you can export more than one element to a single DC element providing they have similar meaning and are useful for resource discovery. An example is the VRA core which has the “attribute” dataDate: which “refers to the date and/or time a particular piece of data was captured” . This date and any other date in the VRA core useful for resource discovery could be exported to the dc:date field (http://www.vraweb.org/projects/vracore4/VRA_Core4_Intro.pdf.)
A comment on your comment Gregreser!. If you are using Dublin Core metadata to describe a digitised photograph of a creative object such as a building or sculpture you could cater for many types of viewers by providing “dc Subject” and “dc Description” for the building / sculpture aspect as well as the architectural photography aspect. I would use keywords, tags or standard vocabularies to do this. There is information about vocabularies @ http://makeit.digitalnz.org/guidelines/describing-digital-content/metadata-resources/
Opera Mini бесплатно. opera mini
Обновленные приложения Android Market. скачать android market
Новый Skype для мобильнго версии 2012 года. скачать скайп для мобильного
Продажа автозапчастей в Туле. Оригинальные запчасти и запчасти неоригинальные, запчасти для иномарок и отечественных автомобилей вы найдете на нашем портале. У нас все магазины запчастей Тулы. запчасти УАЗ в Туле
Компания «ЭМС» Чебоксары. Производство, поставка и монтаж электрооборудования. БКТП
Товары под заказ из Китая в любую точку мира! Китайские телефоны
Денис Давитиашвили – благородный человек. денис давитиашвили
Депутат от ЛДПР Денис Давитиашвили опять сходится с бывшей женой. [url=http://www.triatour.ru/forum/topic.php?forum=3&topic=593]денис давитиашвили[/url]
Greetings
Next thing I noticed is that the manufacturer is Cipla. I checked the site of Cipla, an India-based company, and the only erectile dysfunction drugs they make are TADALAFIL (popularly known as Cialis) & SILDENAFIL CITRATE. No Levitra generic drug! [url=http://pharma.med-online.info/kamagra/site_map.html] buy brand in the united states[/url]
Pa!!!
____________________________
[url=http://pharma.med-online.info/vigra/index.html] order onlines[/url] :)