[DDI-ADG] Geographic coverage descriptions

[Katherine McNeill-Harman]

One question about the new geography spreadsheet.  I was briefed by someone 
on the rest of the conversation and understand that the group chose to go 
w/this structure to minimize duplication.  However, along those lines, I 
want to make sure I understand the description of the Geographic Coverage, 
specifically the relationship among line 4: description, line 22: Geography 
Code, and line 23: Geography name.

We had agreed that Geographic Coverage would be machine actionable; this 
would presumably come in line 22 (as part of geography, then geography 
values), but then how do the descriptions in line 4 and line 23 relate--are 
they simply duplicates?  It's my understanding that the group believes we 
can't have any duplicates.

For example, let's say that we're documenting a study about the United 
States, at which there is information available by state and at lower 
levels (not aggregated at the level of the U.S.); would the information be 
as follows?:

4.    Description: United States
9.    HasSummaryData: N
10.   GeographicLevelCode n/a? (empty, b/in this case it isn't really a level?)
11.   GeographicLevelName n/a? (empty, b/in this case it isn't really a level?)

20.      GeographyCode
21.         Authority: ISO
22.         Code: 10
23.      GeographyName: United States

And if in another study there was data at the same level of the geographic 
coverage (in this case United States), would it be the same as the above, 
but 9 would be Y and 10 and 11 would be filled in?

So again, my question is why do we have two places for the textual 
description of geographic coverage (4 and 23)?  And if I'm misinterpreting 
the role of Geography/Geographic Values, and in fact these won't be filled 
in for geographic coverage, we still need to provide a mechanism for 
machine actionability.

Also, I wonder the relationship between line 3: Bounding Box and line 24: 
Bounding Polygon (although I recall they may have separate and important 
roles, but since it seems to be a similar issue to the above, thought I'd 
check).

Kate

___________________________________________
Katherine McNeill-Harman
Data Services Librarian
Dewey Library for Management and Social Sciences
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Avenue, E53-100
Cambridge, MA 02139
mcneillh at mit.edu
617-253-0787