OLAC Repositories Standard: Call for review

[Gary Simons]

Nick,

One thing you recently wrote was:

> The PARADISEC catalogue contains much more metadata than is provided
> for in the current OLAC repositories standard and it would be useful
> to be able to provide more detail to users. I expect the place to
> have discussed this is on the metadata list and I apologise for not
> having done so earlier.

This has a standard answer in the world of DC-based metadata, namely, it is
intended that you map multiple fields from your metadata catalog into the
same DC field.  For instance, you might five different fields regarding
format that can all be mapped into the Format element.  Typically, people
use their own metadata field names as labels within the element content.
E.g.,

<dc:format>Medium: CD-ROM, Channels: Stereo, Sampling rate: 44KHz, Depth:
24-bit</dc:format>

When in doubt as to which element something should map to, you can always
use <dc:description>.  A particularly rich metadata catalog, could easily
map a dozen fields into <dc:description>.  While this approach limits the
precision of potential queries, it has no inherent limit on how much of
your metadata you can display to a user when they read one of your metadata
records.

-Gary