Status Report of the DC-Standards Working Group - August 2004

Leif Andresen, chair

Maintenance Agency for ISO 15836

The role of DCMI as the official ISO Maintenance Agency for ISO 15836 The Dublin Core™ Metadata Element Set has been discussed with the Secretariat of ISO TC46/SC4. One important aspect of the Maintenance Agency responsibilities is to promote the Dublin Core™ Standard through conferences, presentations, publications and the publication of implementation tools such as guidelines, schemas and specifications. As ISO 15836 is not a complicated standard (describing the basic 15 elements), it was agreed that there is no need for the Maintenance Agency to process defect reports and Approved Amendments.

In regard to the future development of the standard it was agreed that the five-year review of the ANSI/NISO standard and the ISO standard will be closely coordinated. The ANSI/NISO Z39.85 - Dublin Core™ Metadata Element Set will first go through the NISO five-year review taking into account input from the DCMI. On completion of the ANSI/NISO review the required ISO systematic review will be conducted.

Dublin Core™ as RFC

We have still the RFC 2413 (see: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2413.txt) based on Dublin Core™ version 1.0. DCMI Advisory Board accepted in July this year a proposal by John Kunze to IETF about update this RFC to Dublin Core™ version 1.1. John have sent the proposal to IETF.

MMI-DC

An important part of standardization activities according to Dublin Core™ take place in MMI-DC - CEN/ISSS Workshop on Metadata for Multimedia Information - Dublin Core™. CEN/ISSS is European Committee for Standardization / Information Society Standardization System and provides a less formal environment through CEN/ISSS Workshops. These ongoing working groups offer the opportunity for direct participation in the standardization process. CEN/ISSS Workshops aim to arrive at a European consensus on an issue that can be published as a CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA). These deliverables may take the form of best practice agreements, codes of conduct or pre-standards, with the formal backing of CEN.

This year MMI-DC has this working plan:

• Work Item 1 - Revision of CWA 13988, General Guidance for the deployment of Dublin Core™ Metadata
• Work Item 2 - Define and agree a) a CWA for an EU e-government metadata framework and b) a CWA as Guidance for the deployment of the EU e-government Metadata Framework
• Work Item 3 - Define and agree a CWA as Guidance for the deployment of Dublin Core™ metadata in corporate environments.
• Work Item 4 - Define and agree two CWAs a) giving a specification for a machine readable representation of application profiles b) Guidance for naming, versioning, evolution and maintenance of element declarations and application profiles.
• Work Item 5 - Produce a report identifying metadata issues enabling support for accessibility and multilingualism.

Since DC-2003 thes CWA’s are published:

• CWA14855 - Dublin Core™ Application Profile guidelines
• CWA 14856 - Guidance material for mapping between Dublin Core™ and ISO in the Geograpic Information domain
• CWA 14857 - Mapping between Dublin Core™ and IS 19115, "Geographic Information – Metadata"
• CWA 14858- Dublin Core™ Spatial Application Profile
• CWA 14859 - Guidance on the use of metadata in eGovernment
• CWA 14860 - Dublin Core™ eGovernment Application Profiles

More information on MMI-DC homepage: http://www.cenorm.be/sh/mmi-dc

Further activities in formal standardization

Until now we have the fifteen Dublin Core™ elements as formal standard national US with NISO Z39.85 and international with ISO15836. and RFC 2413. Over the years we have discussed the possibilities for a way to standardize how to refine Dublin Core™. A proposals about a formal guidance document for refinements and and a proposals about guildelines for Application Profiles will be discussed at a WG-meeting in Shanghai during DC-2004 in preparation for the DCMI Advisory Board meeting after DC-2004.