Contributor Metadata

[sheilabrennan]

Contributor metadata is saved in a separate table from the DC metadata. It is available in admin/items/show, and separately in the plugin's configuration pages, but it isn't automatically called to public items/show pages.

Is it possible to map the contributor data collected from the contribution form into the DC: Contributor field?

[zerocrates]

This runs into similar issues we've come up against in other plugins: when is it okay to dump things into the Dublin Core, or the elements in general (i.e., Identifier and OAI-PMH Repository, among others)?

We can say that this data makes sense in the Contributor field, but it falls apart a little as soon as the site's using that field in some other meaningful way. It doesn't really help that in Dublin Core, Contributor really should be someone who contributed to the item, not the person who contributed the item to the site (they're one and the same for much "share a story" stuff, I expect).

All of it, I guess, comes down to how the site's using the plugin and the DC elements. For some, "person who contributed this item" as DC Contributor makes sense, for others, they probably want DC Creator instead, and for still others, neither makes sense. I seem to remember there was some not-totally-satisfying logic in the old Contribution around this topic.

Maybe this can be (yet another) configurable option for the plugin: where, if anywhere, to put the contributor's name in the Element metadata?

[sheilabrennan]

Adding another configurable option for mapping to a specific field could work.

Alternatively, we could create a public view for the contributors information. That might also require adding more options to the form (egad) that asks contributors if they wish to have their name & contribution posted to the web or if they wish to post anonymously.