[tdwg-content] dcterms:creator

[Steve Baskauf]

It seems to me that part of the problem here is that there are several 
types of resources that are being mixed.  There is the specimen itself, 
there is the image of the specimen, and there is the metadata record.  
The person digitizing the specimen is the dc:creator of the specimen 
image.  The collector of the specimen or the collector's institution is 
the dc:creator of the specimen.  The person entering the metadata into 
the computer or that person's institution is the dc:creator of the 
metadata record.  Of course a lot of people aren't going to care about 
this level of detail in keeping separate records for those three types 
of resources.  But those same people also probably aren't going to care 
about keeping separate records of who all of the different creators are 
either. 

The same kind of issue exists with other terms, such as dc:language and 
dcterms:created.  If you specify dc:language, is that the language on 
the specimen label, the language of other things on the image (like text 
on added scale bars), or the language of the metadata?  Again, I think 
the solution is to be clear about what resource one is talking about 
rather than to try to come up with separate terms for creator, language, 
and created for three different types of resources. 

Steve

Gregor Hagedorn wrote:
> Using Creator is ok for the person digitizing the specimen (although
> contributor may be more appropriate), but the person who originally
> wrote the label is an dc:creator as well.
>
> dcterms are meant to have a wide scope and by information-lossy. My
> comment is only: do not define: if there is a dc:creator, then it was
> the person who digitized.
>
> Gregor
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-- 
Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer
Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences

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