Glossary on DCMI

Application Profile

Sat, 15 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

An application profile is a metadata design specification that uses a selection of terms from multiple metadata vocabularies, with added constraints, to meet application-specific requirements. In the Dublin Core™ context, application profiles are ideally based on, or compatible with, vocabularies defined in RDF.

Dumb-Down Principle

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The Dumb-Down Principle, which entered Dublin Core™ discourse in 1998, denoted a principled way of viewing a complex metadata description through the lens of a simpler representation, typically Simple Dublin Core.

Encoding Scheme

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The Encoding Scheme entered Dublin Core™ discourse at a 1997 workshop in Canberra, Australia. As originally defined, a Scheme was a Qualifier that "specifie[d] a context for the interpretation of a given element". In 2000, the encoding scheme was differentiated into the Syntax Encoding Scheme and Vocabulary Encoding Scheme.

Dublin Core™ Application Profiles at eleven years (2011)

Tue, 17 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Note: This piece, posted to a DCMI wiki in 2011, was reformatted and lightly edited for the DCMI blog in 2019.

The notion of an "application profile" was introduced to the Dublin Core™ community by Rachel Heery at the 8th Dublin Core™ workshop of October 2000. The idea distinguished sharply between "namespace schemas" (sets of data elements as defined by their maintainers) and "application profile schemas" (sets of data elements drawn from one or more namespace schemas and optimized for local needs by implementors), introducing the notion of "mixing-and-matching Dublin Core™ elements with elements from related vocabularies.

Description Set Profile

Tue, 17 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

The 2008 draft "Description Set Profiles: a constraint language for Dublin Core™ application profiles" (DC-DSP) provided a language for specifying constraints on the structural components of a Description Set as defined by the DCMI Abstract Model. DC-DSP expressed sets of constraints as "templates" against which RDF graph-based instance metadata (records) could be matched (validated) - an idea achievable today using the newer technologies, inspired in part by DC-DSP, Shape Expressions Language (ShEx) and Shapes Constraint Language (SHACL).

Reflections on the DCMI Abstract Model (2011)

Fri, 13 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Note: This short piece, posted to a DCMI wiki in 2011, was reformatted and lightly edited for the DCMI blog in 2019.

The DCMI Abstract Model (DCAM) specifies an abstract syntax for metadata records independent of particular concrete encoding syntaxes. The components of DCAM's abstract syntax map unambiguously to components of the RDF abstract syntax. In addition, DCAM's abstract syntax provides several grouping constructs not present in RDF -- notably "description sets" (mappable in principle to a named graph instantiated as a "metadata record"), "descriptions" (mappable in principle to a sub-graph of RDF triples about a single subject), "DCAM statements" (mappable to a sub-graph composed of an RDF statement plus contextual information about the value of that statement), and "value surrogates" (mappable to the different sets of statements used to describe values directly encoded as literal string values as opposed to values identified by URIs or blank nodes).

Dublin Core™ Grammatical Principles

Fri, 13 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

When the DCMI Usage Board was founded in 2001, it formulated DCMI Grammatical Principles as a point of reference for vocabulary maintenance decisions. The principles, which followed concepts, that had emerged in early Dublin Core™ workshops, such as Element, Qualifier, and Encoding Scheme, were superseded in 2005 by the DCMI Abstract Model, which was based more explicitly on RDF.

DCMI Abstract Model

Fri, 13 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

The DCMI Abstract Model ("DCAM"), developed between 2003 and 2007 and now considered superseded by newer models, described the design of metadata records in terms of structural components, such as Descriptions, Statements, Properties, and (literal or non-literal) Values, in order to enable structural validation of RDF-based metadata.

One-to-One Principle

Sun, 01 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

The One-to-One Principle says that conceptually distinct entities, such as a painting and a digital image of the painting, should be described by conceptually distinct descriptions. The principle was formulated in the early years of Dublin Core™ in order to draw attention to, and challenge, the widespread practice of creating metadata that pragmatically conflated elements descriptive of conceptually distinct resources into a single record.