On Tue, 31 Aug 2004, Eliot Christian wrote:
> At 09:36 AM 8/30/2004, Ray wrote:

>> I agree of course, but as there isn't anything that formally ties the DC
>> index set to the DC schema, I'm trying to imagine how such a

> It is my belief that the root problem with DC elements is that they try
> at once to be abstract (as indexes) and concrete (as record schema elements).
[...]
> context sets. The DC context set can, of course, have its own elements
> for those cases where the content actually has a concrete DC structure.

Except that in the SRW (and Z39.50) model, content doesn't have a
concrete structure, or, in other words, a native record schema.

Even if DC is the only record schema available, it doesn't mean that the
records are in dublin core.  IPR might mean that you can't expose the
original records, but can expose simple DC.  This might also mean that you
have indexes which are searchable, but do not appear in the record.

Another example:

I might have a large database of full text documents.  They're kept as
PDFs, but as I can't return PDF via SRW, I can only expose dublin core
records automatically generated from the documents. However, as I can
index the full text, you can search it.



Rob

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