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I agree. It might be worth looking at the dates expressed in the (UK) National Council on Archives 'Rules for the Construction of Personal, Place and Corporate Names' (section 2.5A) <http://www.ncaonline.org.uk/materials/namingrules.pdf>. This document expresses types of uncertain dates that archivists use when describing the lifetime of people and organisations, but they also apply to creation dates which are often uncertain in archive and manuscript collections. The dates are not expressed as machine readable dates, but they do offer a representation of what archivists need to be able to express. These links from the Archives Hub (a union catalogue of archives in UK Higher Education institutions) also show how some archivists are attempting to encode uncertain dates at present: <http://www.archiveshub.ac.uk/arch/dates1.shtml> and <http://www.archiveshub.ac.uk/arch/dates2.shtml>. Susan Matthew Beacom wrote: > I think that Rebecca has suggested a nice expansion or generalization > of the problem raised by Priscilla's original message. Developing > conventions (and wide agreement in usage) for such uncertain or > otherwise problematic dates would be very helpful for a wide range of > users. > I like the idea of seeing what others are doing, too. > > Matthew > > > At 6/19/2006 02:43 PM, Rebecca S. Guenther wrote: >> ISO 8601 has limited ability to express a lot of types of dates, >> especially some needed for cultural heritage objects, like those that >> are >> questionable, approximate, etc. Perhaps we should come up with some >> PREMIS >> conventions. I looked at this a few years ago in the context of some >> Dublin Core work and could dig up my notes if needed on the >> limitations of >> 8601. There has been little consensus on conventions for these kinds of >> uncertain dates. So it may be prudent to establish some for PREMIS >> perhaps >> based on what other efforts may be using. >> >> Rebecca -- Susan Thomas Project Manager Paradigm Oxford University Library Services Osney One Building Osney Mead OXFORD OX2 0EW Web : http://www.paradigm.ac.uk Telephone: 01865 283821