Some DCMI clarification on dc:type vocbularies

In an earlier entry I discussed the strange hotch-potch that's the set of recommended values for dc:type.

I did find a resource with some insight, straight from the Dublin Core (it seems). The question is:

we classify text documents with a descriptive term from a controlled vocabulary -- 'News', 'Press Releases', 'Situation Reports', etc. Is this a DCM element set 'Description', a 'Format', a 'Type' or, if not any of these, then what? If it is a 'Type', what is the appropriate sub-element? We could use Type -> Text, but that doesn't refer to a descriptor used for categorization of data, which is our purpose for using such terms in the first place.

This to me is clearly the province of dc:type, and the question is how one reconciles a value such as "Press Release" with the approach DCMI has taken with their recommended values. The DCMI reply (drafted by Pete Johnston):

The examples you cite for your "descriptor used for categorization of data" look to me like examples of values for dc:type. They describe (I think! ) "the nature or genre of the content of the resource". DCMI does provide a simple, high level "DCMI Type Vocabulary" (which, as you note, includes the term "Text" ), but you are not limited to using that Type Vocabulary and can use your own "local" vocabulary to provide values for dc:type. Having said that, you need to bear in mind what applications will be consuming your metadata and whether those applications are programmed to interpret your values as you expect. Especially if you are sharing your metadata with applications that may not have "built-in knowledge" of your "local" Type Vocabulary, it is considered good practice to include a term from the DCMI Type Vocabulary where possible. All DC metadata elements are repeatable (unless in the context of your application some additional constraints have been specified ), so you could include two occurrences of dc:type in each metadata description: dc:type = "Text" dc:type = "Press Release"

Pete goes on to explain the concept of DCMI element qualification (I do suggest you be familiar with this concept if you're using DCMI), but that doesn't seem to me to be at the heart of my issue. I'm just surprised that DCMI doesn't have such a sample vocabulary available.

Anyway, in my work at Sun, we're probably going to have to roll our own. One source of fodder I found are in LOM (see my article). The values are:

Exercise, Simulation, Questionnaire, Diagram, Figure, Graph, Index, Slide, Table, Narrative Text, Exam, Experiment, ProblemStatement, SelfAssesment

Too pedagogically oriented for our use, but some fodder nevertheless. Another source I found is PRISM (see my article). It's table #16 in the PRISM 1.2 spec. And here is how the PRISM spec introduces dc:type (from section 5.2.15):

Definition: The style of presentation of the resource's content, such as image vs. sidebar.
Comment: The `type' of a resource can be many different things. In PRISM descriptions, the dc:type element takes values that indicate the style of presentation of the content, such as "Map", "Table", or "Chart". This is in contrast to prism:category, which represents the genre, or stereotypical intellectual content type, of the resource. For example, the genre `electionResults' can be presented in a map, a table, or a chart. Recommended practice for PRISM implementations is to use a value from Table 16: Controlled Vocabulary of Presentation Styles, expressed as a URI reference. Implementations MUST also be able to handle text values, but interoperation with text values cannot be guaranteed. To describe the physical size or digital file format of the resource, use the dc:format element.
Example: The two examples below show how prism:type, prism:category, and dc:format all describe different aspects of a resource. For brevity, the examples below use relative URI references. Assume that they are within the scope of a base URI declaration: xml:base="http://prismstandard.org/vocabularies/1.2/"

<dc:type rdf:resource="resourcetype.xml#article"/>
<prism:category rdf:resource="category.xml#column"/>
<dc:format>text/html</dc:format>
<dc:type rdf:resource="resourcetype.xml#birdsEye"/>
<prism:category rdf:resource="category.xml#photo"/>
<dc:format>image/jpeg</dc:format>

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