[dcc-associates] Use of mods:relatedItem

[Swithun Crowe]

Hello

As part of our institution's digital archiving project, we will be using 
MODS to encode resource discovery metadata. We will be using a 3 layer 
model:

layer 1: a project
layer 2: types of resource (source material, documentation, code etc.)
layer 3: files

There will be very few layer 1 objects and not that many layer 2 objects. 
But there will often be thousands of layer 3 objects per project.

For example, for archiving the Records of the Parliaments of Scotland 
(www.rps.ac.uk), there are many thousands of files (layer 3 objects) 
covering reigns, parliamentary sessions, days in a session, and 
records/acts occurring in a day. Each reign/session/day/record will have 
preceding and succeeding items and will be contained by/contain other 
items.

Other projects will have layer 3 objects with different relations between 
the objects.

We are wondering to what extent have other people used the 
mods:relatedItem element to encode relations between objects in an 
archive. I imagine that one could go to town on this, and (automatically) 
encode all kinds of relations (e.g. so that an entire hierarchy could be 
reconstructed). Or one could only use it to encode (by hand) relations 
between an object in the archive and an object outside the archive (e.g. 
this act is reference by this journal article).

What have other people found to be a suitable level/quantity of detail for 
this element? Should all known relations be encoded, or just a few 
interesting ones?

Thanks.

Swithun.

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