On Mon, 7 Jun 2004 09:29:05 -0700, "Bruce D'Arcus" <[log in to unmask]>
said:
> Also, I think name handling is the weakest part of MODS. I think I sent
> Rebecca some comments on this privately, but donīt have them handy (am
> travelling).
Was in a hurry when I wrote this but expanding a bit, I've got the
following suggestions, which reflect my own more end-user-ish needs, and
ignorance of authority data no doubt. I also make no attempt to conform
to MODS.
1) Get rid of ref and refs, and replace with the actual referents.
Options: person, organization, event, place, work.
2) Make that main element wrap all of the remaining data.
3) Make variant a full element, perhaps contrasted with "primary" or
some such, and wrap it in whatever structure it is, um, varying.
4) remove role from the name, because it is representing separate
metadata (all the more awkward when you take this structure out of mods
into something more general like mads).
So, structure might be:
person
names
primary
given
family
variant
given
family
roles
roleTerm
temporaral
birth
death
place
address
etc.
5) Parse dates (birth/death, etc.), please! If you have separate start
and end dates for organization or person origins, it becomes a lot easier
to process with vanilla xml tools.
Also, and related, I was wanting to figure out how to represent, say,
Thurgood Marshall: a person, who at one time was a lawyer associated with
a famous case, but later played different roles/positions, with different
affiliations.
Bruce
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