[DDI-ADG] Latest Geography Structure - Take 2

Tue Jul 26 09:05:51 EDT 2005

Hi.
I agree with what Katherine is proposing, with two "amendments":
1. We should leave in the textual description ("Description") of 
GeographicCoverage, for those instances where we do not have data at this 
level, or, even if we do have data, for people who want to spell out the 
total coverage in plain English. Both values and description should be made 
optional.
2.If we create yet another container for everything (initially 
GeographicCoverage was thought of as a container) then the highest 
"Geography" should be nestable under Geographic Coverage (since we're no 
longer repeating this level as a Geography.)
Cheers,
Sanda.

p.s. - Last minute changes for today's call - please e-mail me directly: 
sandai at icpsr.umich.edu. Fred - are you taking the call in Ilona's office, 
or at another number?

At 05:13 PM 7/25/2005, Katherine McNeill-Harman wrote:
>To continue the geography thread:
>
>Continuing our discussion last week, I'd suggest two edits to the 
>spreadsheet, a revised version is attached; throwing out several ideas for 
>discussion, so look forward to others' reactions/additional ideas:
>
>1) I do believe we should enable some sort of structured description of 
>geographic coverage (that is the overall coverage of the study) to enable 
>machine actionability on that.  (e.g. I'm imagining some great search 
>interface in the future that has fields for both geographic coverage and 
>geographic level, each of which act on structured metadata)
>
>It seems we have two options for doing this:
>
>a) Right now we just have a place in geographic coverage for a textual 
>description, which provides little/no ability for machine actionability 
>within that section.  However, presumably all overall coverage areas would 
>also be listed as a geographic level, whether or not there's data 
>available at that level (hence, the sub-element of Geography to indicate 
>whether or not that level "HasSummaryData."  Each of those can contain 
>structured GeographyValues.
>
>b) I would propose the alternative, as I think it's a bit more direct.
>I recall us deciding that we would have separate elements for the overall 
>coverage vs. geographic levels (i.e. those levels at which there's data in 
>the study).  I believe that we said that in the case when the geographic 
>coverage/overall area is also a level at which there's data available 
>(e.g. the overall coverage is of a country, but you can also get info. at 
>the country level, not simply at lower levels like state or province), 
>that we would repeat the description of that area in both the geographic 
>coverage and the geographic level elements.
>
>However, as compared to what's in "a," I would propose only repeating the 
>overall coverage area in Geography if indeed it is a level at which data 
>is available (therefore eliminating the for "HasSummaryData," because all 
>levels in there would have data).  Instead, I propose to enable more 
>structured description of the Geographic Coverage within that section 
>itself.  So I've put in there a place to indicate GeographyValues, 
>structured information about the coverage of the study (e.g. if it's a 
>country, the author could insert a standard country code that could be 
>machine-actionable).  I know some people said in the phone conversation 
>that if we were to do this it should be called something other than 
>GeographyValues.  I put that in, but others may have ideas for a better 
>name. [Note, now that something like GeographyValues sits w/in 
>GeographicCoverage, I'm not sure what would be the relationship between 
>the BoundingBox and the Bounding Polygon that's optional w/in GeographyValues].
>
>2) Plus, I wonder about the hierarchical relationships among the elements 
>in the spreadsheet.  Right now everything is under "Geographic Coverage," 
>when in fact this term is referring to a specific aspect of geography that 
>to me isn't logically the "parent" (is that the right use of the term?) 
>over the other things.  I would propose one of two alternatives (listed on 
>sheet 1 and 2 in the attached), and don't know which make more sense 
>structurally.
>a) if we want everything nested under one geographic element (option 1), 
>then I'd create an additional overall element that's simply a container 
>for all the others; I've actually named it Geography, b/this seemed like a 
>logical overall name, and renamed the previous "Geography" 
>"GeographicLevel," as this seemed a little more descriptive.
>b) If there is no need for a top-level element, then I'd flatten it and 
>put GeographicCoverage and GeographicLevel at the same level in the elements.
>
>Not having worked much with version 2.0, some of these ideas may be wacky, 
>but I'll at least put them out there and see what others say.  Look 
>forward to email discussion on this.
>
>Kate
>
>At 12:31 PM 7/19/2005 -0400, J Gager wrote:
>>Sorry for the previous message - I accidently hit send...
>>
>>Here is the latest work up of the Geography structure, I have worked in 
>>Wendy's comments and part of our discussion today.  We have decided it is 
>>time to wrap this up so that we can move on to the our other tasks - Time 
>>and Aggregate Data.  The plan is that the geography will continue to be 
>>reviewed and reworked between meetings via this email list.  We should 
>>really focus on the definitions, as they are admittedly lacking.  Also, 
>>it would be helpful to have a few use cases described.  If there are any 
>>major issues, we can discuss them at the end of our weekly meetings.
>>
>>Thanks,
>>
>>J
>>
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>___________________________________________
>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
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Sanda Ionescu,
Research Associate
Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR)
The University of Michigan
P.O. Box 1248
Ann Arbor, MI 48106

Phone: (734) 615-7890
Fax: (734) 615-7890
        (734) 647-8200