How to represent geographic coordinates for maps

All,

At the German National Library we are currently looking into how to represent coordinates for maps and we need some advice on which representation would be most useful for the community.
 
While looking at publishing coordinates for places in the library authority data, we also started looking at how to represent the geographic extent of maps. I came across three vocabularies that could be useful for that:
1) the (library-specific?) properties scale: http://rdvocab.info/Elements/scale, projection: http://rdvocab.info/Elements/projectionOfCartographicContent and coordinates: http://rdvocab.info/Elements/coordinatesOfCartographicContent from RDA (Resource Description and Access)
2) the properties from wgs84_pos
3) the properties from geosparql
 
If I have understood things correctly, only the RDA ones are applicable directly for a map, whereas wgs84 and geosparql really are about places and not about maps, so that you would need to introduce a level of indirection to use them directly for maps. A (made-up) example:

my:resource a ex:Map ;
        dc:title "The Marauder's Map" ;
        rdvocab:coordinatesOfCartographicContent """W 13' - E 49' / N 45°58' - N 45°33'""" .

my:resource a ex:Map ;
        dc:title "The Marauder's Map" ;
        dct:coverage [ a wgs84_pos:SpatialThing ;
                wgs84_pos:lat_long """ W 13' - E 49' / N 45°58' - N 45°33'""" ;
                .
        ] .
 
So my three questions:
1) Is my interpretation of the use of wgs84 for maps correct?
2) Are coordinates for maps of any use at all to this community?
3) (If the answer to 2) is yes): which representation would be the best for your use cases?

Thanks in advance for any insight,

Lars

***Lesen. Hören. Wissen. Deutsche Nationalbibliothek***
***Reading. Listening. Understanding. German National Library***

-- 
Dr. Lars G. Svensson
Deutsche Nationalbibliothek / Informationstechnik
http://www.dnb.de/

l.svensson@dnb.de

Received on Friday, 12 July 2013 09:15:08 UTC