To my *eyes* (and mind) this appears to be describing a book (mainly based 
on the assertion there is a publisher "San Diego :Harcourt Brace 
Jovanovich," which contains the string "Harcourt Brace Jovanovich", the 
name of a familiar publishing firm), but indeed, it's not particularly 
clear to me, and likely would be in most cases completely obscure to a 
machine process.

Also, without familiarity with library cataloging practice, I might find 
the title "Arithmetic /" odd, or wonder why one if its creators has 
numbers in his name, or feel bad that another creator of "Arithmetic /", 
"Rand, Ted", is ill...

What this is, and its usefulness or "meaning" (including its being a 
"document"; that it is a "description"; that the strings in between angle 
brackets are "names" of "elements" and that they are making an assertions 
about the string, and/or the referent of the string, bounded by pairs of 
angle brackets, etc...) are contingent on the circumstances of its use. In 
some contexts, in some environments, to some processes, it may function 
adequately as a description of a book. In others it might not.

That said, having a reasonably similar and conventional interpretation of 
XML markup, a mutual understanding of the element definitions of dublin 
core (I'm assuming this is dublin core, but there is no namespace 
declaration or association with any schema), and a knowledge of English, 
two or more parties exchanging this record would likely benefit from the 
addition of some content to the "type" element and use of the "format" 
element to clarify what is being described. Would make for a better 
example record on the LC MARC site as well.

About METS and the Semantic Web, I don't think there are any formal 
relationships, but probably much common interest and experience. I would 
be very interested in finding out more about this as well. I for one think 
some integration of rdf with METS would be interesting and maybe helpful.

/Terry



On Wed, 19 
Sep 2007, Trace Bond wrote:

> Is there something wrong with this Dublin Core document?:
> http://www.loc.gov/standards/marcxml/Sandburg/sandburgdc.xml
> <http://www.loc.gov/standards/marcxml/Sandburg/sandburgdc.xml>
> There's nothing (to my eye) that shows that it's describing a paper book.
>
> Another question:
> Are there relationships/collaborations between the METS standard/community
> and the Semantic Web standards/community?
>

Terry Catapano
Special Collections Analyst/Librarian
Columbia University Libraries Digital Program
212-854-9942
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