Sorry for the delay on this... just got back into town :)
The concepts of a spatial and temporal coverage to define the
geographic location and temporal durations of an object are extremely
important for a variety of reasons. These elements, and some of these
reasons, were discussed at the OCLC/NCSA Metadata workshop held last
March. A position paper on this can be found at
<URL:http://www.oclc.org:5046/oclc/research/conferences/metadata/dublin_core_report.html>
The FGDC (Federal Geographic Data Committee) has spent a considerable
amount of effort to describe a "standard" for representing spatial and
temporal information. This standard provides a necessary framework to
work from with respect to these issues. There are invariably,
additional provisions that are required that are more conducive to a
global framework for describing spatial information at a variety of
levels (user browsing to computer GIS systems). I am currently in the
process of writing a Internet draft for the META element that takes
into consideration both the work done in the OCLC/NCSA Metadata
Workshop and these issues. I will forward a pointer to this draft
shortly.
eric j. miller <URL:http://www.oclc.org:5046/~emiller/>
emiller@oclc.org OCLC, Online Computer Library Center, Inc.
emiller@cis.ohio-state.edu Dept. of Geography, The Ohio State University