On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 9:53 AM, Jakob Voss <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> That's your interpretation. According to the schema, the MODS format *is*
> either a single mods-element or a modsCollection-element. That's exactely
> what you can refer to with the namespace identifier
> http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3.

Agreed.  The same is true, of course, of MARC and, by extension,
MARCXML.  Part of the "format" is that it can be one record or
multiple.  I don't think this a particularly strong argument against
using the namespace as an identifier.

> The namespace http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 of the top level element 'mods'
> does not identify the top level element but the MODS *format* (in any of the
> versions 3.0-3.4) itself. This format *includes* the top level element
> 'mods'.

I'm not really sure of the changes between MODS v.3.0-3.3 -- are they
basically backwards and forwards compatible?

I imagine there are a lot of cases where the client doesn't care what
point release of MODS the thing is serialized as, just that it's MODS
and that it can find generally what it's looking for in that
structure, right?

-Ross.