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New documentation should use the "concept" option rather than the original attribute. New documentation wishing to use controlled vocabularies where the "concept" option is not available should use the "controlledVocabulary" structure and associate it If attributes (generally a “type” attribute) were used in the past, these were not connected to external controlled vocabularies and still lack that capability. If they are from a controlled vocabulary the information may be repeated in the new “concept” option. Note that some search systems may be using the attribute as a search term. If so, it is best to use both the “concept” field to capture full information and replicate the value in the attribute to support systems currently in use. The concept field can also be used in conjunction with “otherValue” when declaring an alternate value with an internal vocabulary.
New documentation wishing to use controlled vocabularies where the "concept" option is not available should use the "controlledVocabulary" structure and associate it with the element or attribute containing the value of the controlled vocabulary.
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Material Reference Type
Geographic Information
The elements that support geographic information are primarily found in the Summary Description. These include:
Geographic Bounding Box (geoBoundBox)
Geographic Unit (geoUnit)
Geographic Coverage (geoCover)
Geographic Hierarchies
Geograhic MapThis section provides best practices in the use of these fields to provide detailed information on geographic features in a consistent and managable way. The fields to describe geography have been available since version 2.1.
Geographic Bounding Box
A bounding box is a listing of the North and South Latitudes and East and West Longitudes. It is used by spatial search systems using a geographic point. It is a quick, easily resolvable means of determining whether or not the point falls within the area covered by the dataset.
Note that the non-repeatable geoBoundBox is located within the repeatable Summary Description (sumDscr). The bounding box should only be provided once and cover the full composite area described by one or more sumDscr geographies. It should be in a broad sumDscr with additional sumDscrs involving time nation pairs if needed. If additional bounding box information is desired to identify sub-areas the Bounding Polygon option should be used as this can be expressed as a minimal area of a bounding box. The use of multiple geoBoundBox fields are ignored by most spatial search systems and may cause confusion and an inaccurate search result.
Associating Geographic Locations with Specific Time Periods
Replication of sumDscr is useful when bundling specifics like timePrd, nation, and universe for specific samples within a larger project. A clear example of this is description for the various IPUMS project that harmonize multiple samples of census, health, and related data. IPUMS identified the coverage of individual samples within a project using a combination of these three elements to be able to differentiate between samples:
<sumDscr>
<timeProd date="2014">2014</timeProd>
<nation>Burkino Faso</nation>
<universe>Women</universe>
</sumDscr>
<sumDscr>
<timeProd date="2014">2014</timeProd>
<nation>Burkino Faso</nation>
<universe>Children</universe>
</sumDscr>
<sumDscr>
<timeProd date="2018">2018</timeProd>
<nation>Burkino Faso</nation>
<universe>Women</universe>
</sumDscr>
<sumDscr>
<timeProd date="2018">2018</timeProd>
<nation>India</nation>
<universe>Women</universe>
</sumDscr>
Geographic Hierarchies
Both geogCover and geogUnit are conceptual types and can therefore reference geographic statistical classifications (geographic area type as well as geographic locations) at multiple levels. When defining hierarchies specify a location and the parent geographic area.
<nation abbr=”us”>United States<nation>
<geoCover><concept vocabURI etc.>State/Province</concept>California</geoCover>
<geoCover><concept vocabURI etc.>City</concept>San Jose</geoCover>
<geoCover><concept vocabURI etc.>Other</concept>Silicon Valley</geoCover>
Repeat sumDscr for each set.
NCubes
Description
Dimension definitions
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