Coverage Working Group - Review of RFC2413

A proposed revision to the definition of Coverage appears below. The main changes from the RFC 2413 definition are

• Clarification of element definition
• Removal of comments on experimental nature of element
• Explicit recognition of the main uses of Coverage within the implementor community
• Adoption of ISO 11179 representation, including separation of "Definition" from "Comment"

Proposed definition for Coverage

Name: Coverage

Definition: The extent or scope of the resource

Obligation: Optional

Datatype: Character String

Maximum Occurrence: Unlimited

Comment: COVERAGE will typically include spatial location (a place name or geographic co-ordinates) temporal period (a period label, date, or date range) or jurisdiction (such as a named administrative entity). Recommended best practice is that users draw terms from readily available and widely applicable terminologies such as the Thesaurus of Geographic Names [1], and that, where appropriate, named places or time periods be used in preference to numeric identifiers such as sets of co-ordinates or date ranges.

[1] - See http://shiva.pub.getty.edu/tgn_browser/

Current RFC 2413 definition

The spatial or temporal characteristics of the intellectual content of the resource. Spatial coverage refers to a physical region (e.g., celestial sector) using place names or coordinates (e.g., longitude and latitude). Temporal coverage refers to what the resource is about rather than when it was created or made available (the latter belonging in the Date element). Temporal coverage is typically specified using named time periods (e.g., neolithic) or the same date/time format [3] as recommended for the Date element.

Current Dublin Core™ web site definition

The spatial and/or temporal characteristics of the resource. Formal specification of COVERAGE is currently under development. Users and developers should understand that use of this element is currently considered to be experimental.