News from 2008
A set of XML schemas in support of the "Guidelines for implementing Dublin Core™ in XML" has been updated in light of the January 2008 release of "DCMI Metadata Terms".
The DCMI Directorate is pleased to announce that the Dublin Core™ Metadata Registry has moved to the University of Tsukuba, Japan, where it will be hosted under a collaborative agreement with the Research Center for Knowledge Communities.
DCMI has issued two calls for tender. We are soliciting offers for the production of Guidelines for implementing application profiles, and for the development of Promotional materials for Affiliates and sponsors. Both calls are open until 29 February 2008.
A joint press release was published by the State and University Library Gttingen, Max Planck Digital Library and the Dublin Core™ Metadata Initiative with a further announcement of DC-2008, the eighth International Conference on Dublin Core™ and Metadata Applications, to be held in Berlin, Germany, from 22 to 26 September 2008 under the title Metadata for Semantic and Social Applications. The press release highlights the two main themes: Semantic applications supporting integration of information and Social applications supporting communication and collaboration. The press release is available in English and in German.
An article in Federal Computer Week, published on 4 January 2008, reports that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in the USA has issued three metadata standards that are based on Dublin Core™.
"Expressing Dublin Core™ metadata using the Resource Description Framework (RDF)" has been published as a DCMI Recommendation, replacing two legacy documents: "Expressing Simple Dublin Core™ in RDF/XML" and "Expressing Qualified Dublin Core™ in RDF/XML". As discussed in "Notes on DCMI specifications for Dublin Core™ metadata in RDF", the new, reengineered Recommendation provides a substantially updated RDF expression of Dublin Core™ metadata on the basis of the DCMI Abstract Model.
A major maintenance update of "DCMI Metadata Terms" and the related RDF schemas has been released with improved definitions and usage comments, differentiation between Syntax Encoding Schemes and Vocabulary Encoding Schemes, and the specification of formal domains and ranges for properties. Domains and ranges specify what kind of described resources and value resources are associated with a given property e.g., that dcterms:rights refers to a dcterms:RightsStatement in support of semantic inferencing processes. So as not to affect the conformance of legacy implementations, ranges have been left unspecified for the fifteen properties of the dc: namespace (http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/). In order to provide semantically more precise alternatives for Semantic Web applications, ranges have been defined for fifteen like-named properties in the dcterms: namespace (http://purl.org/dc/terms/). Following the revised DCMI Abstract Model of June 2007, the new documentation reflects the definition of a Vocabulary Encoding Scheme as an enumerated set of resources. The full set of changes is detailed in the document Revisions to DCMI Metadata Terms.
Based on a decision by the DCMI Advisory Board at its meeting in Singapore on 1 September 2007, the DCMI Global Corporate Circle was deactivated in December 2007. In November 2007, a new group was established, the DCMI Knowledge Management Community, that is likely to address issues that should be of interest to corporate users of Dublin Core™ metadata.