Subject: Re: DC in Bib1? (Was: GILS Use Attributes merged into Bib-1)
Douglas Nebert (ddnebert@fgdclearhs.er.usgs.gov)
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 09:48:48 -0400
Message-Id: <35B73F40.58C0CF16@fgdclearhs.er.usgs.gov> Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 09:48:48 -0400 From: Douglas Nebert <ddnebert@fgdclearhs.er.usgs.gov> To: gils@cni.org Subject: Re: DC in Bib1? (Was: GILS Use Attributes merged into Bib-1) References: <s5b6f377.094@USGS.GOV>
On Wed, 22 Jul 1998, Kevin C. Marsh <kmarsh@information.org> wrote:
>
> Eliot Christian <echristi@usgs.gov> wrote:
> >
> > At its June meeting, the Z39.50 Implementors Group recommended that the
> > GILS Use attributes be included in the Bib-1 Attribute Set, as had been
> > proposed and discussed in this forum and elsewhere over the past year.
> >
> > The Z39.50 Maintenance Agency has accordingly modified Bib-1 (see
> > <http://lcweb.loc.gov/z3950/agency/defns/bib1.html#gils> ).
>
> Yes, this looks like a very good move. A bit of a pain to implement at
> the moment, but a good idea in the long run. Since GILS was developed
> with an awareness of Bib1 and existing appropriate Bib1 attributes were
> incorporated into GILS rather than creating new attributes, the
> integration of the two presents few problems.
>
> Dublin Core, on the other hand, was created apparently without reference
> to Bib1 or Z39.50. Ray Denenberg and Rebecca Guenther at the Library of
> Congress released a marvelously helpful document, "Mapping of Dublin
> Core Elements to Z39.50 Bib-1 Search Attributes," on July 22, 1997 (see
> http://lcweb.loc.gov/z3950/agency/copen/dcbib1.html). Using this
> approach it would be easy to simultaneously search by Title or Subject
> across a diverse selection of MARC, DC, CIMI, or other data indexed
> under Z39.50 using Bib1 aqttributes.
>
> By adding separate attributes to the Bib1 list for Dublin Core elements,
> this is no longer simple. What was the purpose or rationale for this
> decision by the ZIG? Is this explained somewhere on-line? I've read
> the meeting minutes, but I don't feel I'm any closer to an understanding
> of this issue.
>
> Am I now forced to chose between intersearchability with most MARC data
> (title=4) or DC data (title=1097)?
>
> Must I convince my server that 4=1097 and so forth for nearly all DC
> fields? And if so, why not just admit that a title is a title and drop
> these new attribute numbers?
>
> Am I the only one who sees this as a problem?
Kevin:
You are not alone. A number of us have been scratching
our heads over these decisions. Things like this (and the CIMI
effort most recently) have been striking out on inventing new
attribute numbers and not worrying about interoperability. I believe
the genesis of it is that in Version 3, your Use Attributes are or
can be qualified by the Attribute Set they come from, so one can
have bib1/4 and dc/1097 asked as two terms in the same query.
Not that this solves anything, but the software now supports
such operations and I think the practicality of juggling lots of
sets at once is considered out of scope to narrowly defined
disciplines who mostly talk to themselves (figuratively).
I very much agree with you that a base set of use attributes,
such as bib-1, should be endorsed and re-used wherever
semantically appropriate if cross-discipline search is sought.
If this key aspect of Z39.50 is abandoned in practice, then
a number of us will abandon Z39.50 when it no longer supports
"easy" cross-domain searching. There are discussions of
an Attribute Architecture that might heal some of this semantic
matching, but I don't know if its progress or effect.
It would appear that Dublin Core wants to be the "center"
and pretend bib-1 tags as we know them don't really exist. I
don't think this is a smart move, and it's likely one we'll
regret, since it effectively isolates information communities
who have a potential to coming together over a simple set of
base search terms!
Doug Nebert
FGDC
<ddnebert@fgdclearhs.er.usgs.gov>
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