Hi Karen,

On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 1:19 PM, Karen Coyle <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> but I would have expected to see a title data element listed somewhere. Is
> dc assumed? Or is the bibliographic description scheme an open question?

The nice thing about Atom is that it allows you to layer in whatever
you want namespace wise into the atom:entry. So yes, you could put
MARCXML, MODS, DCTERMS, RDF/XML, etc into an atom:entry with no
problem.  This flexibility of Atom allows OPDS to be used in multiple
bibliographic metadata environments, and allows it to accommodate
change.

That being said, since OPDS uses Atom, the rules for atom:entry
elements still apply. In section 4.1.2 of RFC 4287 [1] you'll see this
requirement about titles:

    atom:entry elements MUST contain exactly one atom:title element.

There are other requirements from Atom that are also relevant.
Unfortunately it's not really practical for the OPDS spec to repeat
all the details of RFC 4287. However, it is more than likely that
there will be an OPDS Primer or Cookbook that provides practical
guidance on using OPDS. If you feel strongly that there should be more
guidance on the bibliographic metadata in the spec I encourage you to
open an issue ticket [2].

Thanks for the feedback!
//Ed

[1] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4287.txt
[2] http://code.google.com/p/openpub/issues/list