DCMI User Documentation Task Group

Meetings and telecons

• 2010-10-21, Glossary/User Guide face-to-face meeting - report
• 2010-10-21, Glossary/User Guide face-to-face meeting - agenda
• 2010-05-07, Glossary/User Guide telecon agenda
• 2010-05-07, Glossary/User Guide telecon report
• 2010-09-28, Glossary/User Guide telecon agenda

News and Announcements

User Documentation Task Group revising the DCMI Glossary, User Guide, and FAQ

2011-06-06, A newly consolidated User Documentation Task Group is revising DCMI's Glossary, Frequently Asked Questions, and User Guide. Editorial work is being undertaken in DCMI's new MediaWiki. Comments by interested readers are most welcome at the task group's mailing list.

Scope

Purpose

The user guide for Dublin Core™ — Diane Hillmann's "Using Dublin Core™" — was first drafted in January 1998 and last revised in November 2005. The user guide remains one of the most popular documents on the DCMI Web site, attesting to a strong user demand for such introductory materials.

Recognizing that many aspects of the user guide are in need of revision — not just points of detail and links to external documents, but more fundamental points related to the difference between "legacy" and "semantic" approaches to Dublin Core™ metadata, the Usage Board put the user guide on the agenda of its face-to-face meeting in Seoul of 16 October 2009 and noted the following:

• Localization groups need a simple document for new implementers — i.e., the document should remain short and easy to translate
• Parts 4 and 5 on "elements" and "qualifiers" need to be revised and updated with current terminology and noting formal range issues
• The document might in principle be shortened if it were to focus on examples for a smaller selection of more "difficult" properties
• The document needs a new introduction outlining the current principles and goals of DCMI
• With regard to syntax and other implementation issues, the guide need only point to more comprehensive documents.
• The current examples are very "bibliographic" in nature, so at a minimum the document should emphasize the applicability of most properties, in principle, to any type of resource.
• The guidelines for the FOAF vocabulary (e.g., like this) provide one potential model to follow from the standpoint of style.

Method

The editors will work on the new draft user guide on the Usage Board wiki [5]. The existing mailing list for the Glossary Task Group will be used for discussion.

Work plan

• Early September 2010: Draft revised User Guide available for review and comment by interested parties (Usage Board, Advisory Board, Oversight Committee, DC-General mailing list).
• Early October 2010: Final draft circulated for discussion in Pittsburgh.

Forums

Mailing list

Archive:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/dc-(name).html

Wiki

/archive/mediawiki_wiki/User_Documentation.<!--

Open Issues

None.

History

• Task Group constituted: 2010-08-30

Resources

• "Using Dublin Core™"