Random Musings for LS 566

Random thought process - GO!

How does one name the publisher of a digital-born object?

For a book it's easy - look at the title or title verso and it's usually listed there. But a digital-born object like a digital scanned photograph does not have a title or title verso page. Cue the 'hmmmmm' and thinking induced chin stroking. According the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, the publisher is "[a]n entity responsible for making the resource available."

I thinking..............

So how is a digital photograph made available? My first thought was it can't be the photographer because he made/took the picture so that person is more along the lines of creator. My next thought was, well who handles the upkeep of the digital photograph? Electronic things to not react well to benign neglect like many physical objects do.The entity that hosts the digital photograph is the one that makes it available for people to view. So we could  make a case that they are the publisher.

Does that make sense? I think it does.