NISO Metasearch Initiative Proposed Property : Collection Subject Completeness

A subject completeness indicator must specify two things:

• a subject in which completeness is being indicated
• a level of completeness in that subject

Subject completeness is mainly applicable to collections consisting of published resources where it is possible to make some estimate of the total body of published items in any area.

It is strongly recommended that the value of this property is specified as a SubjectCompletenessIndicator.

A free text value for the property may be used.

Completeness of the Finnish national collection:

[as free text]:

The Finnish national collection contains all publications issued in Finland, or in Finnish. There is also a lot of material about Finland published abroad.

[as SubjectCompletenessIndicator]

Subject: [LCSH] Finland

Level of Completeness: [Conspectus Level] 5

RDF/XML example (RDF Graph)

    <rdf:RDF
          xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
          xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#"
          xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
          xmlns:dcterms="http://purl.org/dc/terms/"
          xmlns:prop="http://example.org/proposed/terms/">
      <rdf:Description>
        <dc:title xml:lang="en">The Finnish National Collection</dc:title>
        <prop:subjectCompleteness>
          <prop:SubjectCompletenessIndicator>
            <prop:completenessSubject rdf:type="http://purl.org/dc/terms/LCSH"
                                      rdfs:label="Finland" />
            <prop:completenessLevel rdf:type="http://example.org/proposed/terms/ConspectusLevel"
                                    rdf:resource="http://example.org/proposed/terms/ConspectusLevel/5" />
          </prop:SubjectCompletenessIndicator>
        </prop:subjectCompleteness>
      </rdf:Description>
    </rdf:RDF>
    

Description, Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, v1.1 [dc:description]
http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/description

Information about the subject completeness of a collection is important, since without it there is no means for differentiating between comprehensive and basic level collections. The use of a formal encoding will enable users to search for e.g. comprehensive or study level collections from their interest areas.

Evaluation of collections has suffered from some level of subjectivity, but practice and general guidelines will make the collection descriptions more consistent.

Indicating the subject completeness of collections is primarily relevant for libraries with significant scientific collections. Other libraries and domains such as museums and archives may have only limited use for this property.

None

(Proposed encoding scheme) SubjectCompletenessIndicator
See http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/nisomi/SubjectCompletenessIndicator/

The RSLP Collection Description schema included a property rslpcd:strength:

An indication (free text or formalised) of the strength(s) of the collection.

This was suggested for inclusion in early drafts of the DC CD AP. However, subsequent discussion suggested that:

• the concept of strength represented by the property was not clearly defined, and as a result the property had been interpreted in many different ways in the context of the RSLP CD schema;
• it was applicable only to particular types of collection.

This proposal attempts to offer a more clearly defined property while acknowledging that it is of relevance primarily for a subclass of collections.

A statement using the subjectCompleteness property would "dumb-down" to a statement using dc:description. In the case where the value is a Subject Completeness Indicator, an "informed" dumb-down application would substitute an appropriate human-readable string.