- From: MacKenzie Smith <kenzie@MIT.EDU>
- Date: Mon, 26 May 2003 22:11:13 -0400
- To: www-rdf-dspace@w3.org
OK, I finally caught up on this thread (only a week behind -- not so bad) and here are a couple of gentle reality checks for you all to consider. I also realize this is coming too late for the current descriptive note, but that's ok. I think we have to remember what it is we're using this here History system for. It's the content, not the metadata (and don't tell me that metadata is content -- you know what I mean). -- No one who actually manages archives expects to track changes to the metadata over time. In traditional library/information management systems we keep logs around to track metadata changes temporarily, but it's just not considered important to the core mission of managing the *content* over time... as you've all noted, schemas change, contexts change, resources get described in myriad ways (all at the same time), people make mistakes, fix them, we add stuff, we remove stuff, and so what. I also think it's very unlikely that systems like Haystack would really want access to History data. It's really hard to imagine a case where that would be interesting, except to a curator, who will presumably have other tools to query the data. -- So I think Rob's right -- we need some use cases for our use case. I'm going to start poking around the archivists to see what kinds of information they track over time about the analog resources they're managing now. I suspect it's quite minimal -- you need to know if a thing (manifestation, edition, pick your favorite ontology) has been copied, changed, reformatted, etc., when, how, and by whom. The only reason to store metadata in the History system at all is to know what you're looking at when you're examining the provenance of a piece of content. It would be nice if that metadata were current and correct, but it doesn't seem that critical. And what will you do if there are three or four metadata records (i.e. items) describing the same bitstream(s)? Something we know is going to happen over time, as content gets reused and repurposed. To recap: it's not the metadata we're stewarding and preserving here, it's the content, which happens to have some useful metadata associated with it to allow users discover it, and manages to manage it. Apologies again for the late reply, MacKenzie MacKenzie Smith Associate Director for Technology MIT Libraries Building 14S-208 77 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02139 (617)253-8184 kenzie@mit.edu
Received on Monday, 26 May 2003 22:15:34 UTC