Dublin Core™

The original Dublin Core™ of thirteen (later fifteen) elements was first published in the report of a workshop in 1995. In 1998, this was formalized in the Internet Engineering Task Force standard RFC 2413, and discussions began about making it a standard of the (US) National Information Standards Organization (NISO). The European Committee for Standardization (CEN) published the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set as CWA 13874. The element set was then published as the US standard ANSI/NISO Z39.85-2001 and as an international standard, ISO 15836-2003. The most recent updates of these standards are RFC 5791 (2010), Z39-85-2012, and ISO 15836-1:2017. ISO 15836 Part 2, covering several dozen properties and classes that have been added to DCMI namespaces since 1999, was published in 2019.

Starting in 2002, DCMI grew into the role of "de facto" standards agency by maintaining its own, updated documentation for DCMI Metadata Terms. The DCMI Usage Board currently serves as the maintenance agency for ISO 15836.

In addition to these semantic specifications, DCMI working groups have developed specifications on other topics of relevance to metadata, such as encoding syntaxes, usage guidelines, and metadata models. In the rapidly evolving environment of the World Wide Web, most of these specifications have been superseded over time, sometimes after influencing subsequent work by other technical communities, notably the World Wide Web Consortium.

Specifications of Current Interest (3)

Title Date Issued Status
DCMI Metadata Terms 2020-01-20 recommendation
Namespace Policy for the Dublin Core™ Metadata Initiative (DCMI) 2007-07-02 recommendation process
Linked Data Competency Index (LDCI) 2017-06-28

Past Specifications (75)

Title Date Issued Status
A Cross-Domain Attribute Set 1998-10-09 past note
A Definition of Thesauri and Classification as Indexing Tools 2000-11-28 past note
A Syntax for Writing a List of Labelled Values in a Text String 1999-04-30 past note
Bibliographic Citation Working Draft 1999-07-02 past draft
Coverage Element Working Draft 1997-09-30 past draft
Coverage Working Group - Review of RFC2413 1999-04-08 past draft
Data Model Working Draft 1998-10-07 past draft
Date Element Working Draft 1998-01-27 past draft
DC-Libraries - Library Application Profile - Draft 2004-09-10 past draft
DCMI Abstract Model 2007-06-04 past recommendation
DCMI Box Encoding Scheme 2006-04-10 past recommendation
DCMI DCSV 2006-04-10 past recommendation
DCMI Government Application Profile 2001-09-17 past draft
DCMI Period Encoding Scheme 2006-04-10 past recommendation
DCMI Point Encoding Scheme 2006-04-10 past recommendation
DCMI Type Vocabulary 2012-06-14 past recommendation
DCMI Type Working Group - Review of RFC 2413 1999-03-15 past draft
Description and Cataloging of XML-Data Schemas 1999-05-25 past note
Domains and Ranges for DCMI Properties 2008-01-14 past note
Dublin Core™ and z39.50 1998-02-02 past note
Dublin Core™ Tags Applied to XML-Data Schemas for Purpose of Description and Categorization 1999-05-20 past note
Education Working Group: Draft Proposal 2000-10-05 past draft
Expressing Dublin Core™ metadata using the Resource Description Framework (RDF) 2008-01-14 past recommendation
Expressing Dublin Core™ metadata using XML 2006-05-30 past draft
Expressing Qualified Dublin Core™ in HTML/XHTML meta and link elements 2003-11-30 past recommendation
Format Element Working Draft 1998-10-23 past draft
Guidelines for implementing Dublin Core™ in XML 2003-04-02 past recommendation
List of Resource Types 1999-08-05 past draft
Metadata Semantics Shared Across Languages 1997-03-15 past draft
Names in Dublin Core 1998-10-27 past note
Notes on DCMI specifications for expressing Dublin Core™ metadata in RDF 2008-01-14 past note
On Information Factoring in Dublin Metadata Records 1996-04-17 past note
Plans for a distributed registry of Dublin Core™ in multiple languages. 1998-10-28 past draft
RDF Schema Declaration of Relation Types 1999-04-29 past note
Relation Element Working Draft 1997-12-19 past draft
Representing Peoples Names in Dublin Core 1998-02-03 past note
Subelement Working Draft 1998-02-11 past draft
The Singapore Framework for Dublin Core™ Application Profiles 2008-01-14 past note
The Use of Dublin Core™ Metadata in WebDAV 1998-10-05 past note
Type Element Working Draft 1998-10-23 past draft
Using Dublin Core 2005-11-07 past note
Kernel Metadata 2014-08-14 past note
Dublin Core™ Metadata Element Set, Version 1.1: Reference Description 2012-06-14 past recommendation
DCMI Generic Namespace Policy for RDF Vocabularies 2011-05-02 past note
Guidelines for Dublin Core™ Application Profiles 2009-05-18 past draft
Interoperability Levels for Dublin Core™ Metadata 2009-05-01 past note
Criteria for the Review of Application Profiles 2009-03-02 past note
A MoinMoin Wiki Syntax for Description Set Profiles 2008-10-06 past draft
Expressing Dublin Core™ Description Sets using XML (DC-DS-XML) 2008-09-01 past proposed
Notes on the DC-DS-XML XML Format 2008-09-01 past recommendation
Expressing Dublin Core™ metadata using HTML/XHTML meta and link elements 2008-08-04 past recommendation
Notes on DCMI specifications for Dublin Core™ metadata in HTML/XHTML meta and link elements 2008-08-04 past note
Description Set Profiles: A constraint language for Dublin Core™ Application Profiles 2008-03-31 past draft
DCMI Grammatical Principles 2007-12-03 past note
Expressing Dublin Core™ metadata using the DC-Text format 2007-12-03 past note
Dublin Core™ Collection Description Accrual Method Vocabulary 2013-06-26 past note
Dublin Core™ Collection Description Accrual Policy Vocabulary 2013-06-26 past note
Dublin Core™ Collection Description Frequency Vocabulary 2013-06-26 past note
Dublin Core™ Collection Description Terms 2013-06-26 past note
Dublin Core™ Collection Description Type (CDType) Vocabulary 2013-06-26 past note
Dublin Core™ Collection Description Application Profile 2007-03-09 past note
Dublin Core™ Collection Description Application Profile Summary 2007-03-09 past note
MARC Relator terms and Dublin Core 2005-12-08 past note
Dublin Core™ Application Profile Guidelines 2005-09-03 past note
Element Refinement in Dublin Core™ Metadata 2005-12-07 past note
Guidelines for Encoding Bibliographic Citation Information in Dublin Core™ Metadata 2005-06-13 past recommendation
Dublin Core™ Collection Type (CLDType) Vocabulary 2013-06-26 past note
Dublin Core™ Collection Description Application Profile: Data Model 2004-08-06 past note
DCMI Policy on Naming Terms 2004-04-05 past recommendation
DCMI Usage Board Review of Application Profiles 2003-02-11 past note
Expressing Simple Dublin Core™ in RDF/XML 2002-07-31 past recommendation
Expressing Qualified Dublin Core™ in RDF / XML 2002-05-15 proposed past
Education working group: draft proposal past recommendation
DCMI Qualifiers 2000-07-11 past recommendation
Education working group: Draft proposal past recommendation