Re: observation proposal and name of the observer

On Jul 25, 2006, at 16:26, Rob Seaman wrote:

> On Jul 25, 2006, at 4:51 AM, Alberto Micol wrote:
>
>> I would personally use:
>>
>> meta.title;obs.proposal for the title of a proposal
>> meta.id;obs.proposal for the proposal id
>>
>> I do not understand what "name of an observational proposal"
>> actually means.
>
> Me neither.
>
> The most obvious distinction between the title of a proposal and
> its ID is that the title is assigned by the proposing astronomer(s)
> and the ID is assigned by the observatory acting as an agent for
> the resources the astronomers are proposing to use.
>
>> Yes, in the case of catalogues there is a third quantity to consider,
>> the shortname, which does not exist for proposals.
>
> A name, including a shortname, applies to a resource - whoever
> assigns the name. A catalog, instrument, telescope, filter, etc.,
> is a resource. A proposal is not. A proposal can ultimately
> result in the production of a resource, such as the catalogs or
> images published by a survey project. These may themselves have a
> shortname - a nickname - that might colloquially also be applied to
> the project or even the proposal.
>
> For example, Nick Suntzeff is the P.I. for a proposal entitled:
> "The w Project: Measuring the Equation of State of the Universe".
> NOAO assigned the ID "2002B-0007" (see http://www.noao.edu/perl/
> abstract?2002B-0007). This has resulted in a survey - and the
> fruits of that survey - also known as "ESSENCE" (http://
> www.ctio.noao.edu/essence). One might then choose to refer to the
> "ESSENCE proposal abstract" (a casually assigned name), for
> instance, even though the acronym came about after the original
> project was proposed.

Also in the HST case short names are used (e.g. UDF, HDF, etc), and one could say "the UDF proposal" actually referring to a list of proposals that composed the entire project. (I do not actually remember now whether UDF was developed through various proposals and not only one, but the important thing is that it CAN happen).
Just to say that a nickname is a loose concept, which does not necessarily map one to one with the described entity (the proposal in this case).

Hence I think it would be better to have a meta.nickname ucd...

>> To me names and identifiers are quite different.
>> The name might not be unique, while an identifier better be.
>
> Agree with this, but this distinction is only the result of who
> assigns the token. A name can be assigned by any party involved in
> some resource transaction. An identifier may only be assigned by
> the holder of the resource.

Fully agreed.

> Rob Seaman
> NOAO
Alberto

--
Alberto Micol
ESA/DSCI/RSSD/SNM