dc/dcterms:contributor

[tombaker]

• dc11:contributor (through 2019)

  Comment reads: "Examples of a Contributor include a person, an organization, or a service. Typically, the name of a Contributor should be used to indicate the entity."

• dcterms:contributor (ISO 15836-2 / DCMIMT 2020)

  Comment reads: "The guidelines for using names of persons or organizations as creators apply to contributors."

  range_includes:

  • http://purl.org/dc/terms/Agent

  Examples

  1. Shakespeare, William (a person)
  2. https://isni.org/isni/0000000121032683 (URI for a person)
  3. Hubble Space Telescope (a data service)
  4. UNESCO (an organization)

CHANGING NOW (unless I hear objections!)

• dc11:contributor (DCMIMT 2020)

  Change comment to read: "The guidelines for using names of persons or organizations as creators apply to contributors. Typically, the name of a Contributor should be used to indicate the entity."

  • as per dcterms: but keeping the additional sentence ("Typically...").

PROPOSING FOR FUTURE (to be voted)

• dc11:contributor

  Comment: "The guidelines for using names of persons or organizations as creators apply to contributors." (same as for ISO 15836-2)

  • Drop sentence ("Typically...").

  Declare equivalent to dcterms:

[kcoyle]

"The guidelines for using names of persons or organizations as creators apply to contributors."

I would really like to see "also" in there, if it's not too late. It would read:

"The guidelines for using names of persons or organizations as creators also apply to contributors."

[tombaker]

"The guidelines for using names of persons or organizations as creators also apply to contributors."

I checked all of our decisions against the text in ISO 15836-2 but seem not to have checked all of the text in ISO 15836-2 against our decisions. I cannot find this sentence in any of the decision texts, meeting minutes, or closed Github issues.

That said, I think the sentence is quite reasonable (wherever it came from) and I do agree that it would be improved by adding "also".

I see three options:

1. Keep the sentence as worded in ISO 15836-2.
2. Simply omit the sentence from DCMIMT (and live with the fact that it is part of ISO 15836-2).
3. Revise the sentence as you suggest.

I have implemented the third option for tomorrow's release but could reconsider if anyone wants to argue that the sentence itself is actually unhelpful.