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C: Coverage

Definition: The extent or scope of the content of the resource.

Obligation: Recommended when describing a service, otherwise optional.

What is this element?

Use the Coverage element, with the appropriate refinement, to describe the geographic or time related aspects of the content of a resource and the area and period for which a service is valid.

Coverage is recommended, particularly when the service or other resource is not valid for the whole of New Zealand, or applies to a limited time period. For local government or regionally based organisations this element should be used. The spatial or jurisdiction value will typically be the territorial authority's name. For central government the spatial or jurisdiction value will typically be "New Zealand".

Coverage and other elements

Coverage always relates to the content of the resource, not to the intended users (Audience), or the places it can be obtained or accessed from (Availability), or who is responsible for it existing (Creator) or administering it (Publisher). [Refer also to Section B.7.2]

For the date on which an agency was created, or commenced operation or ceased to operate, use Date.

Coverage supplements Subject, adding means of defining limits. It relates to the content of a resource where the scope is limited to part of a range (e.g. of place and/or time aspects).

Repetition

You may repeat Coverage if there is no suitable collective name for a group of areas. Do not repeat to list the subdivisions of a named area or period.

Qualifiers

Refinements

Coverage may include spatial location (a place name or geographic co-ordinates), temporal period (a period label, date, or date range) or jurisdiction (legally defined, geographic area). [This is a means of being clear as to the area meant - e.g. Coverage.jurisdiction = Auckland City conveys a different understanding from Coverage.spatial = Auckland.]

Jurisdiction

This is the name of the political/administrative entity covered by the content of the resource, or the territory over which a particular agency exercises its legal authority, for example of the authority regulating a licence.

Use the jurisdiction refinement for:

  • general material on the legislative and political affairs of a specific, legally defined, geographic area;
  • services that are valid only within a geographic area (jurisdiction used instead of spatial because rights in law apply with legally defined areas.);
  • agencies that have a mandate only within a geographic area.

Jurisdiction names should be drawn from the NZGLS Jurisdiction controlled values list of territorial and central government authorities, described at Appendix 6.

Spatial

This refers to the spatial characteristics of the intellectual content of the resource.

The refinement "spatial" refers to geographic locations or areas that are covered by or discussed in the content of the resource. These are usually standard place names of a location. The points at which the services are arranged would come under the Availability element, not the Coverage element.

Use the spatial refinement:

  • when describing general geographic, economic, social or cultural affairs having a strong focus on place, to allow for a consistent retrieval within a specified geographic context;
  • for the geographical area covered by the service - where the coverage of the service is determined by geographical factors, not legal boundaries.

Place names are preferred to numeric identifiers, such as sets of coordinates.

You may opt to use these sub-refinements to make clear what type of spatial information is being entered:

  • geographicDescription - a proper name - see the controlled value lists in this section.
  • geographicBox - use the DCMI Box Encoding Scheme.
  • geographicElements - defined polygons encoding scheme.

Temporal

This refers to the temporal characteristics of the intellectual content of the resource.

The refinement temporal refers to time periods, for example, the date range of the time for which a licence is valid. Use the temporal refinement for periods:

  • covered by or discussed in the content of the resource, or
  • for which the service is valid.

A date or a date range can be entered in a standard format as specified in the W3C-DTF Date and Time Formats, i.e. as YYYY-MM-DD/YYYY-MM-DD where month and day detail is optional, or using the DCMI Period date encoding scheme if a end date is not known [refer to Date]. Alternatively, a standard period name for the time - such as the "Depression", chosen from a controlled value list can be given. Such names, however, are often loosely defined, the period covered by the name may vary from place to place, and there may be alternative names in use.

For example, for a fishing licence, you could use the Coverage element with refinements as follows, if the information is all necessary or useful:

  • The spatial refinement to describe the area in common usage terms, e.g. Taupo.
  • The temporal refinement to show the date range of the time for which the licence was valid, e.g. the dates of the fishing season.
  • The jurisdiction refinement to specify the legally defined area for which the fishing licence is valid, e.g. Taupo Fishing District.

The NZGLS maintenance agency may, if the needs of those trying to find information would be better served, extend the Coverage element with further refinements to cover other aspects that are currently described using Subject, such as demographic data.

Controlled Vocabularies

Recommended best practice is to select a value from a controlled vocabulary and that, where appropriate, place names be used in preference to numeric identifiers such as sets of coordinates.

Jurisdiction

Names should be drawn from the NZGLS Jurisdiction controlled values list of terms, see Appendix 6.

Spatial

When using the geographicDescription refinement, names can be drawn from controlled values lists such as:

If there is more than one area with that name, add the region as well, e.g.

  • Whangaehu, Wanganui
  • Whangaehu, Wairarapa

Temporal

Date ranges are preferred, but where useful select period names from controlled values lists such as LCSH - Library of Congress Subject Headings.

Encoding schemes

If the metadata creation tool that you use does not handle the encoding for you, then you need to follow the appropriate encoding schemes to ensure the information is correctly read by other applications.

If an agency uses its own standard scheme for either spatial or temporal coverage, the scheme name should be encoded in the Coverage element and the NZGLS maintenance agency (Archives New Zealand) notified.

Recommended encoding schemes are:

Dates

Encode in the formats specified by the W3C-DTF "Date and Time Formats" profile of ISO 8601 : 2000 "Data elements and interchange formats - information interchange - representation of dates and times" [2000], supplemented by DCMI Period which adds methods of describing open-ended periods which ISO 8601 : 2000 lacks.

  • Specify as much of the date and time as is useful - typically year, month and day; but, for example, year might be all that is appropriate.
  • Use small dashes '-' to separate the date components.
  • Use the forward slash "/" as a separator for the two dates defining a period, for example, 2001-01-01/2001-01-31

For example:

  • ISO 8601 : 2000 - a date:
    YYYY-MM-DD (e.g. 1997-07-16)
  • ISO 8601 : 2000 - Periods of Time when start and end dates are known:
    YYYY-MM-DD/YYYY-MM-DD (eg1997-07-16/1997-8-17)
  • DCMI Period - when the start or end date are not known:
    start=YYYY-MM-DD
    end=YYYY-MM-DD

Examples

(jurisdiction) [NZGLSJuri] Auckland City

(temporal) [ISO8601] 2000-07-01/2001-06-30

(spatial) [NZGLSJuri] Wellington

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