Dublin Core

History

Dublin Core draws its name from an work group which met in 1995, in the town of Dublin, in the American State of the Ohio, to define a joint base of elements usable by the US government for the description of the numerical Ressources in the Registres of official metadata (defense, justice…)

The workshop of March 1995 was sponsored by the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). It gathered 52 researchers and professionals of the libraries, data processing, the encoding of texts, to advance the state of the art in the development of the recordings of description of resources (or Métadonnée S) for the data-processing objects in network.

See: OCLC/NCSA Metadata Workshop Carryforward

Y took part:

For the OCLC: Stuart Weibel, Jean Godby, Eric Miller (see NCW)
For Los Alamos National Laboratory (Advanced Computing Lab): Ron Daniel.

Organization

The semantic elements of Dublin Core were and are still discussed and maintained by an international work group, pluri disciplinary, and bringing together librarians, data processing specialists, specialists in the edition or museums, researchers or experts resulting from public or deprived organizations.

The DCMI (Dublin Core Metadata Initiative) is an organization which supports this activity by maintaining an open forum. It organizes in particular work groups, workshops and International Conferences.

The French-speaking people can discuss within the framework a mailing list DCMI-FR. For the activities more especially related to research site ARTIST opened a space dedicated to the DCMI where the calls to the conferences are in particular translated (for example Manzanillo 2006 and Singapore in 2007).

Description

List elements and refinements

One 16th element appears sometimes, the Audience, but it does not appear in the list of the standard ISO 15836.

Dublin Core " qualifié" /" not qualifié"

The significance of some elements can be specified using refinements . A refinement restricts the significance of an element, but without changing it basically. The use of refinements is optional.

When these refinements are used, one speaks about Dublin Core qualified .

All the elements are not obligatory. The list of the elements and refinements depends on the type of use which one wishes to make of the documents, for example if one wishes a use in the field of defense, justice, the environment…

Alternatives

Files

Protocol OAI-PMH (Open Files Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting) rests on “Dublin Core” not qualified.

Theses

There exists an alternative adapted to the theses of research, used for the publications of CNRS.

OpenWeb

The publications of the OpenWeb use the elements of “Dublin Core” on the Métadonnées.

Organization of Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI)

Work groups of the DCMI

The DCMI includes several work groups:

DCMI Administrative Metadata Work Group (Metadatum S administrative)
DCMI Accessibility Interest Group
cd. Agents Work Group
DCMI Structures Work Group: engineering problems (RDF)
DCMI Quotation Work Group
DCMI Collection Description Work Group
DCMI Education Work Group
DCMI Environment IG (ISO 19115)
DCMI Government Work Group
DCMI Internationalization and Localization Interest Group
DCMI Libraries Work Group
DCMI Registry Work Group
DCMI Work Group
DCMI Tools Work Group
DCMI Work Group
DCMI To use Guide Work Group
DCMI Corporate Circle IG
DCMI Kernel/ERC (Electronic Resource Quotation)

Source: State off the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, April 2003

Participating governments

A conference took place with Florence in Italy in October 2002. It gathered 210 participants of 25 countries.

The 9 governments which were represented with the DCMI in March 2003 were:

Source: Survey off government implementations off Dublin Core

Implementation

Aspects safety: to be based on the standard of Register of metadata

Dublin Core provides a joint base of elements which can be used in a Registre of metadata. It is about a reference frame of level Gouvernemental, which induces certain constraints of Souveraineté. More than eight governments in the world adopted it.

To implement such a Référentiel without Discernement makes run the Risque to let the informational Patrimoine without Protection. It is necessary to be fully Conscient constraints related to Dublin Core for good a Data security.

In particular, Dublin Core proposes a structure of elements, but not the organization (Registre of metadata) necessary to the protected operation of Entreprises in network.

All Registre of metadata must conform to the standard ISO/CEI 11179, which comprises a whole of recommendations on the description of the elements and the central authority of recording to be set up (left 6). The US government takes guard to apply this instruction to all the registers which it manages.

In the field of the Authentification, one notes that the electronic Certificat is associated with the element identifier in the dictionary of metadata for the reference frame of publications CNRS.

Standardization and translation in French

Dublin Core not qualified (without refinements) became an international standard in 2003: ISO 15836.

A translation of Dublin Core not qualified in French is available to AFNOR: ISO 15836 normalizes - November 2003 - Information and documentation - the whole of the elements of Métadonnée S Dublin Core.

This translation, very short (6 pages), does not describe the method of implementation, so that one frequently employs more complete nonofficial translations on line, with the Risque S that represents on the inaccuracy of the terms, and especially on the organization.

There is not, in 2006, of international consensus on a complete translation in French.

See Site of the project ARTIST, profile of application of Dublin Core for the discovery of the resources Web to the government of Canada, (2006) by the Council Secretariat of the Treasury, Marie-Claude Côté.

There exist other translations in French:

OpenWeb
Elements of metadata of Dublin Core, Version 1.1: Description of Reference, by Anne-Marie Vercoustre, INRIA (2000) (older)

User guides in French

There exist also user guides in French. Those were developed primarily with the Canada and, in France, for the Bibliothèque S:

User guide of Dublin Core, by Guy Teasdale, University Laval (2001)
Guide of installation of the metadata for the resources Web of the government of Canada, by the Work group of the GED on the metadata (2005)
Profile of application of Dublin Core for the discovery of the resources Web to the government of Canada, (2006) by the Council Secretariat of the Treasury
User guide of Dublin Core not qualified in BnF, by the National library of France (2006), within the framework of the protocol OAI-PMH

There exists user guide in French, neither for the Gouvernement, nor for the companies.

Use of Dublin Core

In the government agencies and the international organizations

Governments and international organizations:

More than nine governments and international organizations employs Dublin Core like reference frame of Métadonnée S for their administrations:

Governments: the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland, Finland, Denmark, Iceland (Situation in January 2002)
International organizations: United Nations for the food and agriculture, Program of the United Nations for the environment, the World Health Organization,

In the European Union:

Since 1997, the DGXIII/4-E of the European commission studies the use of Dublin Core;
a resolution of the European commission mentions Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI);
Project SWAD Europe (W3C) for the development of language SKOS within the framework of the semantic Web;
European Agency of the environment;
Program IDABC;
MIReG, for the promotion of Dublin Core in the Public sector in the European Union.
ePSIplus Project on the provision of the public data (Directive 2003/98/CE): the bibliography carries out regroupings of titles per geographical area, author, publicator, language, type of document, which corresponds to elements of Dublin Core.

Dublin Core is also used in China and India.

Use in France

Some uses of this reference frame are indicated in this site: Use of the metadata Dublin Core: French projects (situation in 2003)

Nuxeo Core can use the diagram Dublin Core: Nuxeo Core

Recall: it is necessary to be based on the standard ISO/CEI 11179 on the Registres of metadata.

In data-processing programming

The declarations of terms of Dublin Core are represented in the diagram RDF (Resource Description Framework).

See: DCMI term declarations represented in RDF diagram language

In terms of Architecture Web, the expression of Dublin Core qualified or not qualified can be made with the Langages of beaconing HTML, XHTML, and XML.

See: Forum structures of the DCMI

The méta-elements of Dublin Core are employed like beacons in the programming network-centric.

See: Network centric computing - Resulting off document description in HTML

The Espaces of names which allow the interworking between the applications are described in a directive ( policy ) emitted by the DCMI. It contains three spaces of names:

for the 15 elements of data,
for the terms (elements and qualifieurs other than the elements above),
for the type of vocabulary.

See: Namespace Policy for the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative

Other reference frames of metadata

There exist other reference frames like MARC (especially employed in the libraries), MODS (Bibliothèque of the Congress), IPTC (press). What characterizes Dublin Core, it is its extreme simplicity compared to the other reference frames.

The Métadonnée S are also employed:

for the Management of the proof: ISO 23081, MOREQ2
in the geographical Information: ISO 19115 and ISO 19139
in the model of filing OAIS

These applications can or not employ Dublin Core like reference.

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