Internet-Draft: draft-kunze-rfc2413bis-02.txt                   J. Kunze
Dublin Core Metadata                            University of California
Expires 24 November 2004                         Office of the President
                                                             24 May 2004


                  The Dublin Core Metadata Element Set

  (http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-kunze-rfc2413bis-02.txt)

Status of this Document

   This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with
   all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026.

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   Distribution of this document is unlimited.  Please send comments to
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   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004).  All Rights Reserved.

.  Abstract

   Defines fifteen metadata elements for resource description in a
   cross-disciplinary information environment: title, creator, subject,
   description, publisher, contributor, date, type, format, identifier,
   source, language, relation, coverage, and rights.

   This document, containing essentially the same text as ANSI/NISO
   Z39.85, supersedes Internet RFC 2413, which was the first published
   version of the Dublin Core.

.  Foreword

   (This foreword is not part of the standard.  It is included for
   information only.)



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   The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) began in 1995 with an
   invitational workshop in Dublin, Ohio that brought together
   librarians, digital library researchers, content providers, and text-
   markup experts to improve discovery standards for information
   resources.  The original Dublin Core emerged as a small set of
   descriptors that quickly drew global interest from a wide variety of
   information providers in the arts, sciences, education, business, and
   government sectors.

   Since the original workshop there has been steadily growing interest
   in resource descriptions that are easy to create and that almost
   anyone can understand.  The potential to increase visibility of
   resources in a collection across sectors and subject domains, and to
   do so at low cost, is broadly appealing.  Services needing
   semantically rich descriptions would continue to provide them, but
   would attract cross-disciplinary discovery by also providing
   universally understandable descriptions common across disciplines.
   The digital tourist metaphor is apt.  Internet travelers seeking
   information in foreign disciplines can use the Dublin Core's
   constrained vocabulary to obtain basic guidance in a language that
   they understand.  Full accessibility to the culture and its services
   still requires mastery of the local vocabulary and environment, but a
   set of simple facts inscribed in Dublin Core can bring to the
   tourist's attention a foreign information portal that might otherwise
   have escaped notice.

   The interest in cross-domain discovery fueled growing participation
   in a series of subsequent DCMI workshops.  The Dublin Core metadata
   element set described here is a set of 15 descriptors that resulted
   from this effort in interdisciplinary and international consensus
   building.  As of June 2000 the Dublin Core exists in over 20
   translations, has been adopted by CEN/ISSS (European Committee for
   Standardization / Information Society Standardization System), and is
   documented in two internet RFCs (Requests for Comments).  It also has
   official standing within the WWW Consortium and the Z39.50 standard.
   Dublin Core metadata is endorsed formally by governments in three
   countries for promoting discovery of government information in
   electronic form, and Dublin Core is under consideration as a national
   information standard in at least five others.

   The Dublin Core is not intended to displace any other metadata
   standard.  Rather it is intended to co-exist -- often in the same
   resource description -- with metadata standards that offer other
   semantics.  It is fully expected that descriptive records will
   contain a mix of elements drawn from various metadata standards, both
   simple and complex.  Examples of this kind of mixing and of HTML
   encoding of Dublin Core in general are given in RFC 2731 [RFC2731].

   The simplicity of Dublin Core can be both a strength and a weakness.
   Simplicity lowers the cost of creating metadata and promotes
   interoperability.  On the other hand, simplicity does not accommodate



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   the semantic and functional richness supported by complex metadata
   schemes.  In effect, the Dublin Core element set trades richness for
   wide visibility.  The design of Dublin Core mitigates this loss by
   encouraging the use of richer metadata schemes in combination with
   Dublin Core.  Richer schemes can also be mapped to Dublin Core for
   export or for cross-system searching.  Conversely, simple Dublin Core
   records can be used as a starting point for the creation of more
   complex descriptions.

.  Scope and Purpose

   The Dublin Core metadata element set is a standard for cross-domain
   information resource description.  Here an information resource is
   defined to be anything that has identity; this is the definition used
   in Internet RFC 2396, "Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic
   Syntax", by Tim Berners-Lee et al.  For Dublin Core applications a
   resource will typically be an electronic document.

   This standard is for the element set only, which is generally used in
   the context of a specific project or application.  Local or community
   based requirements and policies may impose additional restrictions,
   rules, and interpretations.  It is not the purpose of this standard
   to define the detailed criteria by which the element set will be used
   with specific projects and applications.

   This standard supersedes Internet RFC 2413, which was the first
   published version of the Dublin Core.

.  Definitions

   DCMI -- Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, the maintenance agency for
   the Dublin Core.

   Information resource -- anything that has identity (the same
   definition as in Internet RFC 2396).

   Lifecycle of an information resource -- a sequence of events that
   mark the development and use of an information resource.  Some
   examples of events in a lifecycle are:  Conception of an invention,
   Creation of a draft, Revision of an article, Publication of a book,
   Acquisition by a library, Transcription to magnetic disk, Migration
   to optical storage, Translation into English, and Derivation of a new
   work (e.g., a movie).

.  The Element Set

   In the element descriptions below, each element has a descriptive
   label intended to convey a common semantic understanding of the
   element, as well as a unique, machine-understandable, single-word
   name intended to make the syntactic specification of elements simpler
   for encoding schemes.



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   Although some environments, such as HTML, are not case-sensitive, it
   is recommended best practice always to adhere to the case conventions
   in the element names given below to avoid conflicts in the event that
   the metadata is subsequently extracted or converted to a case-
   sensitive environment, such as XML (Extensible Markup Language)
   [XML].

   To promote global interoperability, a number of the element
   descriptions suggest a controlled vocabulary for the respective
   element values.  It is assumed that other controlled vocabularies
   will be developed for interoperability within certain local domains.

.  The Elements

Element Name:   title

   Label:       Title
   Definition:  A name given to the resource.
   Comment:     Typically, Title will be a name by which the resource is
                formally known.

Element Name:   creator

   Label:       Creator
   Definition:  An entity primarily responsible for making the content
                of the resource.
   Comment:     Examples of Creator include a person, an organization,
                or a service.  Typically, the name of a Creator should
                be used to indicate the entity.

Element Name:   subject

   Label:       Subject and Keywords
   Definition:  A topic of the content of the resource.
   Comment:     Typically, Subject will be expressed as keywords, key
                phrases, or classification codes that describe a topic
                of the resource.  Recommended best practice is to select
                a value from a controlled vocabulary or formal
                classification scheme.

Element Name:   description

   Label:       Description
   Definition:  An account of the content of the resource.
   Comment:     Examples of Description include, but are not limited to,
                an abstract, table of contents, reference to a graphical
                representation of content, or free-text account of the
                content.






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Element Name:   publisher

   Label:       Publisher
   Definition:  An entity responsible for making the resource available.
   Comment:     Examples of Publisher include a person, an organization,
                or a service.  Typically, the name of a Publisher should
                be used to indicate the entity.

Element Name:   contributor

   Label:       Contributor
   Definition:  An entity responsible for making contributions to the
                content of the resource.
   Comment:     Examples of Contributor include a person, an
                organization, or a service.  Typically, the name of a
                Contributor should be used to indicate the entity.

Element Name:   date

   Label:       Date
   Definition:  A date of an event in the lifecycle of the resource.
   Comment:     Typically, Date will be associated with the creation
                or availability of the resource.  Recommended best
                practice for encoding the date value is defined in a
                profile of ISO 8601 [W3CDTF] and includes (among others)
                dates of the form YYYY-MM-DD.

Element Name:   type

   Label:       Resource Type
   Definition:  The nature or genre of the content of the resource.
   Comment:     Type includes terms describing general categories,
                functions, genres, or aggregation levels for content.
                Recommended best practice is to select a value from a
                controlled vocabulary (for example, the DCMI Type
                Vocabulary [DCT]).  To describe the physical or digital
                manifestation of the resource, use the Format element.

Element Name:   format

   Label:       Format
   Definition:  The physical or digital manifestation of the resource.
   Comment:     Typically, Format will include the media-type or
                dimensions of the resource.  Format may be used to
                identify the software, hardware, or other equipment
                needed to display or operate the resource.  Examples of
                dimensions include size and duration.  Recommended best
                practice is to select a value from a controlled
                vocabulary (for example, the list of Internet Media
                Types [MIME] defining computer media formats).




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Element Name:   identifier

   Label:       Resource Identifier
   Definition:  An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given
                context.
   Comment:     Recommended best practice is to identify the resource
                by means of a string or number conforming to a formal
                identification system.  Formal identification systems
                include but are not limited to the Uniform Resource
                Identifier (URI) (including the Uniform Resource Locator
                (URL)), the Digital Object Identifier (DOI), and the
                International Standard Book Number (ISBN).

Element Name:   source

   Label:       Source
   Definition:  A reference to a resource from which the present
                resource is derived.
   Comment:     The present resource may be derived from the Source
                resource in whole or in part.  Recommended best practice
                is to identify the referenced resource by means of a
                string or number conforming to a formal identification
                system.

Element Name:   language

   Label:       Language
   Definition:  A language of the intellectual content of the resource.
   Comment:     Recommended best practice is to use RFC 3066 [RFC3066],
                which, in conjunction with ISO 639 [ISO639], defines
                two- and three-letter primary language tags with
                optional subtags.  Examples include "en" or "eng" for
                English, "akk" for Akkadian, and "en-GB" for English
                used in the United Kingdom.

Element Name:   relation

   Label:       Relation
   Definition:  A reference to a related resource.
   Comment:     Recommended best practice is to identify the referenced
                resource by means of a string or number conforming to a
                formal identification system.

Element Name:   coverage

   Label:       Coverage
   Definition:  The extent or scope of the content of the resource.
   Comment:     Typically, Coverage will include spatial location (a
                place name or geographic coordinates), temporal period
                (a period label, date, or date range), or jurisdiction
                (such as a named administrative entity).  Recommended



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                best practice is to select a value from a controlled
                vocabulary (for example, the Thesaurus of Geographic
                Names [TGN]) and to use, where appropriate, named places
                or time periods in preference to numeric identifiers
                such as sets of coordinates or date ranges.

Element Name:   rights

   Label:       Rights Management
   Definition:  Information about rights held in and over the resource.
   Comment:     Typically, Rights will contain a rights management
                statement for the resource, or reference a service
                providing such information.  Rights information often
                encompasses Intellectual Property Rights (IPR),
                Copyright, and various Property Rights.  If the Rights
                element is absent, no assumptions may be made about any
                rights held in or over the resource.

.  Security Considerations

   The Dublin Core element set poses no risk to computers and networks.
   It poses minimal risk to searchers who obtain incorrect or private
   information due to careless mapping from rich data descriptions to
   the simple Dublin Core scheme.  No other security concerns are likely

.  Author's Address

   John A. Kunze
   California Digital Library
   University of California, Office of the President
   415 20th St, 4th Floor
   Oakland, CA  94612-3550, USA

   Fax:   +1 510-893-5212
   EMail: jak@ucop.edu

.  References

   [DCT]      DCMI Type Vocabulary.  DCMI Recommendation, 11 July 2000.
              http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-type-vocabulary/

   [ISO3166]  ISO 3166 - Codes for the representation of names of
              countries.  http://www.din.de/gremien/nas/nabd/iso3166ma/

   [ISO639]   ISO 639-2 - Codes for the representation of names of
              languages, Alpha-3 code (ISO 639-2:1998).
              http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/langhome.html

   [MIME]     Internet Media Types.  http://www.isi.edu/in-
              notes/iana/assignments/media-types/media-types




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   [RFC3066]  Tags for the Identification of Languages, Internet RFC
              3066.  http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3066.txt

   [RFC2396]  Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax,
              Internet RFC 2396.  http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt

   [RFC2413]  Dublin Core Metadata for Resource Discovery.  Internet RFC
              2413.  http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2413.txt

   [RFC2731]  Encoding Dublin Core Metadata in HTML.  Internet RFC 2731.
              http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2731.txt

   [TGN]      Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names.
              http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabulary/tgn/index.html

   [W3CDTF]   Date and Time Formats, W3C Note.
              http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime

   [XML]      Extensible Markup Language.  http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml

.  Appendix A:  Further Reading

   (This appendix is not part of the standard.  It is included for
   information only.)

   Further information about the Dublin Core metadata element set is
   available at the URL,

       http://dublincore.org/

   This web site contains information about workshops, reports, working
   group papers, projects, and new developments concerning the Dublin
   Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI).


.  Appendix B:  Maintenance Agency

   (This appendix is not part of the standard.  It is included for
   information only.)

   The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) is responsible for the
   development, standardization and promotion of the Dublin Core
   metadata element set.  Information on DCMI is available at the URL,

       http://dublincore.org/


.  Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004).  All Rights Reserved.




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J. Kunze                  12. Copyright Notice                  [Page 9]