Joachim,
For what it's worth, we have a similar situation.  We need to record 
parallel headings in different scripts (Arabic and Romanized Arabic) in 
Name, Title, and Subject fields.  Our solution is similar to your first 
example (we also have @script).  Embarrassingly, our URIs don't actually 
resolve to anything (yet?); they're really just there as keys to bind 
the two fields together in a way that is not otherwise reflected in the 
structure of the data .  I have to admit that this always felt like a 
bit of a workaround for functionality that should exist in MODS, but, as 
you point out, these terms are simply different labels for the same 
concept, so maybe it's not so bad after all. :-)

Another solution we considered was to use @ID on one element and a hash 
link from the other parallel fields, i.e.:
> <subject authority="stw" ID="thisSubject" lang="en">
>   <topic>Financial crisis</topic>
> </subject>
> <subject authority="stw" xlink:href="#thisSubject" lang="de">
>   <topic>Finanzmarktkrise</topic>
> </subject>
to me this falsely implies that one version is subordinate to the other. 
For us it would have been a slightly better solution because we don't 
have real URIs, but I fully expect that this is only  a matter of time 
(http://id.loc.gov/ !).

There was a similar discussion on this list sometime in the past year 
about how to link name and title headings. I can't seem to find it in 
the list archives, but maybe someone else will remember if it ever came 
to anything.

Best of luck,
Jon

Jon Stroop
Metadata Analyst
C-17-D2 Firestone Library
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544

Email: [log in to unmask]
Phone: (609)258-0059
Fax: (609)258-0441

http://diglib.princeton.edu
http://diglib.princeton.edu/ead



Neubert Joachim wrote:
> We are mapping data to MODS record structures (from a PICA library 
> system via Marc21 interface) . This includes various kind of authority 
> data, eg. subjects, persons etc. For subjects, the authority data is 
> in SKOS. (Thesaurus for Economics, preview on 
> http://www.zbw.eu/beta/stw). It is based on concepts with an URI as 
> persistent identifier. The concepts have prefered labels in German and 
> English, which should be present in the MODS records for display and 
> indexing convenience.
>  
> What we figured out as a possible solution is this:
>  
> <subject authority="stw" 
> xlink:href="http://zbw.eu/stw/descriptor/19664-4" lang="en">
>   <topic>Financial crisis</topic>
> </subject>
> <subject authority="stw" 
> xlink:href="http://zbw.eu/stw/descriptor/19664-4" lang="de">
>   <topic>Finanzmarktkrise</topic>
> </subject>
>  
> (We don't really like the de-normalized form. Much better would be:
> <subject authority="stw" 
> xlink:href="http://zbw.eu/stw/descriptor/19664-4">
>   <topic lang="en">Financial crisis</topic>
>   <topic lang="de">Finanzmarktkrise</topic>
> </subject>
> However, that's invalid in MODS 3.3)
>  
> What do you think - is it ok to use xlink:href for the reference to 
> the authority record?
>  
> Since we are new in the MODS field, we wonder if there is are other 
> solutions or best practices for this we may not be aware of.
>  
> Cheers, Joachim
> --
> Joachim Neubert
> IT Development
> German National Library of Economics (ZBW)
>