Dublin Core

The Dublin Core Schema is a small set of vocabulary terms that can be used to describe digital resources (video, images, web pages, etc.), as well as physical resources such as books or CDs, and objects like artworks. The full set of Dublin Core metadata terms can be found on the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) website. The original set of 15 classic metadata terms, known as the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set (DCMES), is endorsed in the following standards documents: The Dublin Core Schema is a small set of vocabulary terms that can be used to describe digital resources (video, images, web pages, etc.), as well as physical resources such as books or CDs, and objects like artworks. The full set of Dublin Core metadata terms can be found on the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) website. The original set of 15 classic metadata terms, known as the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set (DCMES), is endorsed in the following standards documents: Dublin Core metadata may be used for multiple purposes, from simple resource description to combining metadata vocabularies of different metadata standards, to providing interoperability for metadata vocabularies in the linked data cloud and Semantic Web implementations. 'Dublin' refers to Dublin, Ohio, USA where the schema originated during the 1995 invitational OCLC/NCSA Metadata Workshop, hosted by the OCLC (Online Computer Library Center), a library consortium based in Dublin, and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). 'Core' refers to the metadata terms as 'broad and generic being usable for describing a wide range of resources'. The semantics of Dublin Core were established and are maintained by an international, cross-disciplinary group of professionals from librarianship, computer science, text encoding, museums, and other related fields of scholarship and practice. Starting in 2000, the Dublin Core community focused on 'application profiles' – the idea that metadata records would use Dublin Core together with other specialized vocabularies to meet particular implementation requirements. During that time, the World Wide Web Consortium's work on a generic data model for metadata, the Resource Description Framework (RDF), was maturing. As part of an extended set of DCMI metadata terms, Dublin Core became one of the most popular vocabularies for use with RDF, more recently in the context of the linked data movement. The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) provides an open forum for the development of interoperable online metadata standards for a broad range of purposes and of business models. DCMI's activities include consensus-driven working groups, global conferences and workshops, standards liaison, and educational efforts to promote widespread acceptance of metadata standards and practices. In 2008, DCMI separated from OCLC and incorporated as an independent entity. Currently, any and all changes that are made to the Dublin Core standard, are reviewed by a DCMI Usage Board within the context of a DCMI Namespace Policy (DCMI-NAMESPACE). This policy describes how terms are assigned and also sets limits on the amount of editorial changes allowed to the labels, definitions, and usage comments. The Dublin Core standard originally included two levels: Simple and Qualified. Simple Dublin Core comprised 15 elements; Qualified Dublin Core included three additional elements (Audience, Provenance and RightsHolder), as well as a group of element refinements (also called qualifiers) that could refine the semantics of the elements in ways that may be useful in resource discovery. Since 2012, the two have been incorporated into the DCMI Metadata Terms as a single set of terms using the RDF data model. The full set of elements is found under the namespace http://purl.org/dc/terms/. Because the definition of the terms often contains domains and ranges, which may not be compatible with the pre-RDF definitions used for the original 15 Dublin Core elements, there is a separate namespace for the original 15 elements as previously defined: http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/. The original DCMES Version 1.1 consists of 15 metadata elements, defined this way in the original specification: