------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2004 16:42:45 +0100 From: Thomas Baker Subject: An analysis of questions on AskDCMI To: DC-USAGE@JISCMAIL.AC.UK Note: This file, http://www.bi.fhg.de/People/Thomas.Baker/ISSUES/CACHE/AskDCMI-questions.txt, to be archived as http://dublincore.org/usage/meetings/2004/03/AskDCMI-questions.txt. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dear all, I took two hours to go through all of the categories on AskDCMI to see what has been happening, and here are some quick notes on the 136 questions asked there to date which I submit as a contribution to the discussion in Bath (see below; this analysis will also be archived in the directory of materials for the Bath meeting and will appear at the next build). The official DCMI FAQ, on the other hand, currently has 31 questions, and some of these are very obviously out of date (e.g., "What is the Warwick Framework?" is not a frequently asked question, though one person on AskDCMI did in fact ask it). My gut feeling is that we could come up with perhaps 15 broad questions which cover everything in the scope both of the current FAQ and of the AskDCMI corpus of questions. I have some ideas how this could be done. I was also noticing that each of the questions in the current DCMI FAQ has, in effect, a citable URL, such as: http://dublincore.org/resources/faq/#whatismetadata http://dublincore.org/resources/faq/#dcmetadata I'm thinking that if we had a fifteen-question FAQ in which each question were citable in the manner above, the AskDCMI experts could answer alot of the questions simply by pointing people to the URL anchor of the corresponding question in the FAQ. I am also thinking that such a FAQ could become the focus of ongoing Usage Board attention -- an eight-page document that every Usage Board member is expected to re-read before every meeting and which then gets explicitly re-approved by the UB at every meeting. Tom --- Home - About DCMI Which countries use it? Does DC replace AACR2? What is CEN? Do search engines index it? Home - About DCMI - Administration What is the IP of DCMI documentation? Home - About DCMI - Conferences None. Home - About DCMI - Boards/Committees/Working Groups What ever happened to Admin Core? Home - About DCMI - Documentation What is the URL for the NISO standard? (Garbled question.) How do I use DC for photograph collections? Does it cost money to use DC? Can you recommend an article about people's names? What are refinements? Home - Implementation To embed or not? How can I use DC for content management and search in the newspaper industry? How do I implement DC in MS-Access? Do DCMI documents tell you how to generate tags on the fly? Is there a classification scheme for still photos? Is there a tool to convert USMARC to DC? Can I use DCMI's "document status" element? How can I put centuries and ranges into dc:date? Is there a (DCMI) standard for keywords? Where can I find translations of Dublin Core? How can I describe geographic information? How can dc:source be used to reference old books? Was Creator.Personalname.Address approved somewhere? Could we register the European Music Navigator vocabulary? Is there a list of documentation types for software? How do we describe conference proceedings with DC? Four questions on search engines, tags, and databases. How can I use DC to describe a collection of photographs? What ever happened to DC.Creator.CorporateAddress? Home - Implementation - Metadata in general What is the difference between a thesaurus and a classification? What is the difference between a thesaurus and a taxonomy? How is metadata used in bibliographic networks? Where can I take a course on DC? Must we pay DCMI if we provide a drop-down menu for dc:subject? "WHAT IS METADATA IN VIDEO?" by JOACHIN Why do search engines have trouble with my XML tags? Does Google index DC? What does CODEN stand for? What is the history of metadata? Which search engines use DC in HTML headers? Does DC have to go on every Web page? Are there any enterprise metadata warehouse applications? "Metadata framework implementation" - How do I analyse the structure of a resource? Where can I find the education extensions for DC? In "isVersionOf", why are the words run together? Whatever became of the Warwick Framework? Home - Implementation - Maintenance Home - Implementation - Other issues Is Audience the 16th element? How can I use DC to search for photographs? What is the relationship between the CORES Project and DCMI? What is the difference between DC and SCORM? How can I use DC for spatial metadata? Do DCMI documents tell you how to generate tags on the fly? Should I translate the tag "creator" into Vietnamese? Where can I take classes on DC, XML, and RDF? Where can I find a standard approach to versioning documents? What is the relationship between DC and FRBR? Home - Implementation - Storage How can I store metadata separately and link? How could DC be implemented in RDBMS? Home - Terms Could DC help us describe art-history slides? Is Audience the 16th element? What is the relationship between DCMI and the IEEE/LOM community? Is there a difference between a sub-element and a refinement? What is the semantics of Title? What is the difference between a Term and an Element? Can I add a field to an RSS feed? What are sub-elements? Home - Terms - Application Profiles Does the creator of an AP decide what should be mandatory? Home - Terms - Encoding Schemes Disappearing angle brackets: http://askdcmi.askvrd.org/index.asp?id=5239 How do I register an encoding scheme? I'm confused about the example in the DCSV recommendation. Home - Terms - Encoding Schemes - Syntax Encoding Schemes Very specific question about DCMI Point Home - Terms - Encoding Schemes - Vocabulary Encoding Schemes Will DCMI register additional vocabulary schemas? Disappearing angle brackets: http://askdcmi.askvrd.org/index.asp?id=5239 How can I register a vocabulary? Is there a standard markup language for controlled vocabularies? Must we pay DCMI if we provide a drop-down menu for dc:subject? Which of the DCMI types would I use for cataloging a Website? I am looking for subject taxonomies for eGovernment. Home - Terms - Encoding Schemes - Vocabulary Terms Where do I put video track information? What are sub-elements? Home - Terms - Elements Can I use dc:identifier for ISSNs? Distinction creator/publisher. Is Audience the 16th element? Where do I put the name of the person submitting the material? Four different questions about dc:relation. Someone told me there are 16 elements. Where do I put the location of the creator? Where do I put the location of the publisher? (different person) How does DC relate to RSS? A follow-up email on the four questions about dc:relation. What is the semantics of Title? How do I use DC with SCORM and DMSO/HLA? Are all elements repeatable? Which elements are mandatory? How can I add an element? What equivalencies exist between DC, IEEE/LOM, and SCORM? Can I repeat dc:identifier? What is the difference between "term" and "element"? Should I use "isPartOf" or "isReferencedBy"? Is Dublin Core extensible? Please give me examples of Contributor. How can I say something is a Press Release? Should I repeat dc:publisher and distinguish between the two types? How can I implement name authority? How do I describe Sponsors and Partners of a project in RDF? How do I indicate the source of a classification code? Home - Terms - Refinements What is the difference between sub-elements and refinements? Can I create my own refinements? What are sub-elements? (someone else) Are multi-element tags like "Date.Created.Digital" interoperable? How can I extend Creator to put in birthdates? How can I extend Creator to distinguish first name from family name? How can I use XSLT to create multi-element DCSVs? Can I put number of pages into Format? Home - Syntaxes Where can I find the xsd files that work together? Which is better, HTML or XML? Which is better, XML or HTML? Which is better, XML or RDF? How do I use DC for geographic information? Home - Syntaxes - HTML What is the semantics of Title? Are keywords case-sensitive? Should it be "creator" or "Creator"? Home - Syntaxes - RDF How do I add a field to an RSS feed? What is the correct RDF syntax for "isPartOf"? Which of these two syntaxes is correct? Can the value of dc:subject be a URI representing a person? Home - Syntaxes - Other What are the intended cardinalities? Disappearing angle brackets: http://askdcmi.askvrd.org/index.asp?id=5239 Can one specify a minimum length of 1? Where can I find the xsd files that work together? Can DC in XML have qualifiers? Should we translate the tags into Marathi? Home - Syntaxes - XML Are the XML schemas "official" and stabile? How can I dumb down Dc.creator.contact? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 10:55:04 +0100 From: Thomas Baker Subject: AskDCMI on the Bath agenda? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I see the questions building up on AskDCMI again and am feeling uncomfortable about the model here, so I'm thinking we should perhaps give this issue some time in Bath. Some of what is making me uncomfortable: -- When questions come into my mailbox but not answers, I cannot know which ones have been answered without going to the Web, nor can I accumulate my own archive of answers, meaning I have to search the database on the Web to know whether a similar question has been answered. -- Not being able to get an overview of what has been written, I am uneasy with the notion of a growing set of overlapping answers to overlapping questions, and that some of these answers may in fact be controversial, or out-of-date, or at any rate need to be maintained. -- It is not clear to me whether the goal is to accumulate a body of best practice and use that corpus to refine and improve our collective sense of best practice over time. If the goal is not to accumulate knowledge, then the AskDCMI work feels like a relentless servicing of user requests. If the goal is to learn from the process, then it is not clear to me how we can capture that learning. For example, if the answers were being cited and summarized in a single, growing FAQ file that we could periodically download and keep on hand, then one could presumably answer alot of the new questions simply by pointing to a specific section of the FAQ. This would also have the welcome side effect of improving the quality of http://dublincore.org/resources/faq/, which does indeed need to be revised. -- If the answers are not being captured or summarized in such a central document, it is not clear to me what longer- term responsibility is being implicitly assumed (and by whom) for reviewing and maintaining the many separate answers. In principle, does an answer have an expiration date? -- It is not clear to me how AskDCMI relates to DCMI's open mailing lists, where asking the same question might lead to a discussion instead of a straightforward (but possibly simplistic or misleading) answer. I pose this concerns in a constructive spirit because I would very much like to see this service work. On the other hand, AskDCMI is not a service of the Usage Board, so I am uncertain how far this discussion should go. In Bath, we could perhaps consider the following: -- A printout (if such can be generated) of the entire corpus of answers and rough analysis of questions by type. -- A general discussion of current plans and future developments in light of the comments above.