Location
Meaning and purpose
Location information describes locations in time and space.
Location includes a range of information:
- Electronic addresses including email and URLs for web pages
- Electronic service arguments where a URL is for a service
- Physical addresses (both street and postal addresses) and telephone and fax numbers (with effect from introduction of RIF-CS 1.2 in November 2010).
- Spatial location
Additional information
A date range can be recorded using Date from and Date to. More information about Date from and Date to.
RIF-CS best practice guidelines
Describing locations
- Location information (whether address or coverage information) should be recorded only if it will add to the discoverability of the object or in assessing its value or in accessing the object. If the location information is readily available elsewhere and more easily maintained elsewhere, do not record it in the ANDS Collections Registry.
- Each location element should contain metadata about a single location (for example, the electronic address of a collection; work location for a person; business invoicing or delivery locations for an organisation; service location for a service; physical location for a repository).
- The location element should be repeated if more than one location is to be recorded.
Locations for collections
- Locations for collections published online will usually be URLs (electronic addresses). For collections such as a herbarium or museum, a street address, postal address or spatial location with coordinates for map display of the location may also be appropriate.
- Optionally, to record the location of a collection within a repository, create a record for the collection and another record for the repository where the collection is held. Both records will be of type "collection". The repository record may contain electronic and physical address information. The two records should then be related using the IsLocatedIn/IsLocationFor relation type.
Locations for activities, parties and services
The location element contains a range of information that will vary in appropriateness according to the class of entity being described.
- activity—relevant locations may include a physical address, an electronic address, or the URI of a web page.
- party—relevant locations may include physical or electronic addresses or the URI of a web page.
- service—see the Services page.
Recording multiple locations
The location element is a wrapper element that contains repeatable child elements 'address' and 'spatial'. The child element 'address' is also a wrapper element that contains 'electronic' and 'physical' address elements. The separation between the elements exists to allow different formatting to be used for the different kinds of locations—URIs for electronic addresses, text (possibly based on AS4590) for physical addresses, and spatial coordinates for geospatial locations.
If you need to describe multiple locations
- different kinds of locations should be provided in separate location elements
- multiple locations of the same kind, for example, multiple electronic addresses, can be nested within a single address wrapper or the address wrapper can be repeated (see examples below). There is no semantic difference between these options, and there are no implications for display in Research Data Australia. The simplest approach that meets your needs is recommended.
Examples (syntactically and semantically equivalent):
Option 1: repeated element within a single address wrapper element
<location>
<address>
<electronic type="url"><value>http://uni.edu.au/one</value></electronic>
<electronic type="url"><value>http://uni.edu.au/two</value></electronic>
</address>
</location>
Option 2: repeated address wrapper elements
<location>
<address>
<electronic type="url"><value>http://uni.edu.au/one</value></electronic>
</address>
<address>
<electronic type="url"><value>http://uni.edu.au/two</value></electronic>
</address>
</location>
RIF-CS v1.0.1 users
For users of RIF-CS v1.0.1 only, use a location type of coverage to distinguish spatial and temporal coverage from other kinds of location information (RIF-CS v1.0.1 only). The location type of "coverage" should only be selected when the information is to be recorded describes the intellectual content of a collection or activity, i.e. temporal or spatial coverage. Do not select "coverage" for parties or services. Later versions of RIF-CS include a Coverage element for this information, and migration to later versions is recommended.
Refer to the section on spatial and temporal coverage for more information.
RIF-CS v1.2.0 changes effective from November 2010
With the introduction of this updated version of the schema, the following changes to the location element were made:
- Telephone and fax numbers are described as part of Physical Address instead of Electronic Address
- A separate Coverage element is available for describing spatial and temporal coverage
| Date | Change history |
| April 2010 | Consultation draft |
| 26 Oct 2010 | RIF-CS v1.2.0 change information added |
| 25 Jan 2011 | Link to new information about recording locations for services added |
| 15 Feb 2012 | Simplified layout and separated content relating to RIF-CS v1.0.1, added advise about XML using location wrapper |
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