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Dublin Core Element Set, Version 1.0: Reference Description
Note: This document has been superceded by Dublin
Core Element Set, Version 1.1
This document has also been published as:
Weibel, S.; Kunze, J.; Lagoze, C.; Wolf, M. 1998. Dublin Core Metadata for Resource Discovery.
IETF #2413. The Internet Society, September 1998.
This document is the reference description of the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set. See
the Dublin Core Home Page (http://purl.org/dc/)
for further information about the workshops, reports, working group papers, projects, and
new developments concerning the Dublin Core Metadata Element set.
The current list of elements and their general definitions were finalized in December
1996. The elements and their names are not expected to change substantively from this
list, though the application of some of them is currently experimental and subject to
varying interpretation from implementation to implementation.
Note that elements have a descriptive name intended to convey a common semantic
understanding of the element. To promote global interoperability, a number of the element
descriptions may be associated with a controlled vocabulary for the respective element
values. It is assumed that other controlled vocabularies will be developed for
interoperability within certain local domains. In the element descriptions below, a formal
single-word label (expressed in all upper case) is specified to make the syntactic
specification of elements simpler for encoding schemes. Each element is optional and
repeatable.
Questions or comments regarding the Dublin Core Element Set may be addressed to dc@oclc.org.
Element Descriptions
- Title
Label: Title
The name given to the resource, usually by the Creator or
Publisher..
- Author or Creator
Label: Creator
The person or organization primarily responsible for creating
the intellectual content of the resource. For example, authors
in the case of written documents, artists, photographers,
or illustrators in the case of visual resources.
- Subject and Keywords
Label: Subject
The topic of the resource. Typically, subject will be expressed
as keywords or phrases that describe the subject or content
of the resource. The use of controlled vocabularies and formal
classification schemas is encouraged.
- Description
Label: Description
A textual description of the content of the resource, including
abstracts in the case of document-like objects or content
descriptions in the case of visual resources.
- Publisher
Label: Publisher
The entity responsible for making the resource available in
its present form, such as a publishing house, a university
department, or a corporate entity.
- Other Contributor
Label: Contributor
A person or organization not specified in a Creator element
who has made significant intellectual contributions to the
resource but whose contribution is secondary to any person
or organization specified in a Creator element (for example,
editor, transcriber, and illustrator).
- Date
Label: Date
A date associated with the creation or availability of the
resource. Recommended best practice is defined in a profile
of ISO 8601 ( http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime
) that includes (among others) dates of the forms YYYY
and YYYY-MM-DD. In this scheme, the date 1994-11-05 corresponds
to November 5, 1994.
- Resource Type
Label: Type
The category of the resource, such as home page, novel, poem,
working paper, technical report, essay, dictionary. For the
sake of interoperability, Type should be selected from an
enumerated list that is under development in the workshop
series.
- Format
Label: Format
The data format and, optionally, dimensions (e.g., size, duration)
of the resource. The format is used to identify the software
and possibly hardware that might be needed to display or operate
the resource. For the sake of interoperability, the format
should be selected from an enumerated list that is currently
under development in the workshop series.
- Resource Identifier
Label: Identifier
A string or number used to uniquely identify the resource.
Examples for networked resources include URLs and URNs (when
implemented). Other globally-unique identifiers, such as International
Standard Book Numbers (ISBN) or other formal names would also
be candidates for this element.
- Source
Label: Source
Information about a second resource from which the present
resource is derived. While it is generally recommended that
elements contain information about the present resource only,
this element may contain metadata for the second resource
when it is considered important for discovery of the present
resource.
- Language
Label: Language
The language of the intellectual content of the resource.
Recommended best practice is defined in RFC 1766
- Relation
Label: Relation
An identifier of a second resource and its relationship to
the present resource. This element is used to express linkages
among related resources. For the sake of interoperability,
relationships should be selected from an enumerated list that
is currently under development in the workshop series.
- Coverage
Label: Coverage
The spatial and/or temporal characteristics of the intellectual
content of the resource. Spatial coverage refers to a physical
region (e.g., celestial sector) using place names or coordinates
(e.g., longitude and latitude). Temporal coverage refers to
what the resource is about rather than when it was created
or made available (the latter belonging in the Date element).
Temporal coverage is typically specified using named time
periods (e.g., Neolithic) or the same date/time format ( http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime
) as recommended for the Date element.
- Rights Management
Label: Rights
A rights management statement, an identifier that links to
a rights management statement, or an identifier that links
to a service providing information about rights management
for the resource.
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