[Metadatalibrarians] What is a metadata element?

[Ratliff, Louise]

Hi,
  The simplest definition is a "field."  A field contains a value.  A
MARC tag such as 245 is a field, which contains a value which is the
title.  A Dublin Core "property" (=field =element) such as CONTRIBUTOR
contains a value, in this case a name.
  Does this very simple explanation help?  
Louise

Louise Ratliff
Social Sciences Cataloger
UCLA Library Cataloging & Metadata Center
Phone: (310) 206-5853
Fax:   (310) 794-9357 

-----Original Message-----
From: metadatalibrarians-bounces at lists.monarchos.com
[mailto:metadatalibrarians-bounces at lists.monarchos.com] On Behalf Of
McGrath, Kelley C.
Sent: Friday, May 01, 2009 11:26 AM
To: 'metadatalibrarians at lists.monarchos.com'
Subject: [Metadatalibrarians] What is a metadata element?

What is a metadata element? This seems like kind of a stupid question,
but I am having trouble getting my head around it for some reason so I'm
hoping someone on this list can set me straight.

I have poked around and found some definitions:

Dublin Core: "properties for use in resource description"
(http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/)

RDA glossary: "A word, phrase, or group of characters representing a
distinct unit of bibliographic information." (from the draft at
http://www.rdaonline.org/constituencyreview/)

CEN (The European Committee for Standardization) in one of their draft
documents on cinematographic works defines an element as "A semantic
unit that is a major property of one or more entities. An element can
have attributes ([named property whose value domain can be restricted by
a data type]) and can be composed of sub-elements ([semantic unit that
is a property of an element, but not a direct property of an entity])."

Does anyone know of any other definitions that might be helpful?

I think my sticking points at the moment are two:

1. Are there any constraints on the kinds of things that can be
elements? How do you know what to make into an element (presumably
depends on context, but are there any guidelines anywhere)? Is there a
standard way of talking about more specific information related to an
element (attributes, sub-attributes, sub-elements, qualifiers or
whatever they might be called) and if so can someone point me to a place
where this is described?

2. How are elements related to entities, attributes and relationships
from ER modeling? Obviously metadata elements don't have to be related
to ER modeling, but if they are, is there a standard way of approaching
this? Looking at the DC elements, there seem to be things that are both
entities (creator, contributor) and attributes (title, rights). Are
there any circumstances under which a relationship would be an element?

Does whether or not a creator or other person is treated as an entity
that is related to something or as an attribute depend on whether the
name is transcribed or uncontrolled (which almost seems to be a sort of
attribute in the context of traditional library cataloging) or is linked
to a separate entity record through an identifier or normalized in some
way (which seems more like a pointer to a related entity)?

Thank you for any insight you can give me on this.

Kelley

--------------------------------------------
Kelley McGrath
Cataloging and Metadata Services Librarian (A/V)
Bracken Library
Ball State University
Muncie, IN 47306
(765) 285-3350
kmcgrath at bsu.edu


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