an introduction to the dublin core and the dcmi gateway group seminar, blenheim palace, thursday 28...

An introduction to the Dublin Core and the DCMI

Gateway Group seminar, Blenheim Palace,

Thursday 28 February 2002

Pete Johnston

UKOLN, University of Bath

Bath, BA2 7AY

UKOLN is supported by:

[email protected]://www.ukoln.ac.uk/

Introduction to the Dublin Core and the DCMI, Gateway Group seminar, 28 Feb 2002

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An introduction to the Dublin Core and the DCMI

• Resource discovery on the Web• The mission and activity of the DCMI• The DC Metadata Element Set• Some current activity• DC in government


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Resource discovery on the Web

• Resource providers have moved into a shared network space

• Recognition that users wish– “to refer to intellectual and cultural materials

flexibly and transparently without concern for institutional or national boundaries” (Dempsey,

2000) • Convergence: services for resource

disclosure, discovery and delivery which span boundaries

– “smashing the silos” (Cathro, 2001)


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And closer to home….

When people interact with government they want to do so on their own terms.

They want high quality services which are accessible, convenient and secure.

People should not need to understand how government is organised, or to know which department or agency does what, or whether a function is exercised by central or local government.

– Cabinet Office, e-government: A strategic framework, 2000


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The mission of the DCMI

• To make it easier to find resources using the Internet through the following activities:

– Developing metadata standards for discovery across domains,

– Defining frameworks for the interoperation of metadata sets,

– Facilitating the development of community- or discipline-specific metadata sets that are

consistent with the above items


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The activities of the DCMI

• Standards development and maintenance– maintaining existing recommendations– participation in formal standards activities – overseeing evolution of vocabularies– technical working groups

• Educational outreach & user support– DCMI Web site– workshop series, other events– tutorial materials, user guides

• Liaison– other metadata communities

• Tools, services & infrastructure– liaison with developers– access to schemas, metadata schemas registry


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DCMI organisation

• Directorate– Executive Director (Stuart Weibel, OCLC),

Managing Director (Makx Dekkers)

• Board of Trustees– cross-domain expert group– assist strategic planning– develop community support

• Usage Board– appointed by Directorate– ensure orderly evolution of DC vocabularies– editorial committee, evaluate proposals from WGs


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DCMI organisation

• Advisory Board– chairs of WGs and invited experts– forum for technical/strategic co-ordination– liaison with other communities

• Working Groups, Special Interest Groups– organised around problem/task areas– formed/dissolved as dictated by work at hand– open to participation– consensual approach

• Seeking to – maintain open, consensus-based model– establish maintenance processes that earn confidence

of stakeholders


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A (very) brief history

1994: 2nd WWW conference, Chicago• informal discussions

1995: NCSA/OCLC Metadata w’shop, Dublin, Ohio• The “Dublin Core” 13-element set of metadata

semantics for Web resources

1996: DC-2 Warwick workshop• “Warwick Framework”: metadata is modular

1996: DC-3 Dublin, Ohio workshop• expand 13 elements to 15 (less text-centric?)

1997-: RDF: formal expression of W.F.

2000: DCMI recommends qualifiers


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The Dublin Core Metadata Element Set

• Interdisciplinary consensus on simple element set for resource discovery

– 15 elements– all optional– all repeatable

• Not intended for complex resource description– initial idea of “simple document-like object”– simplicity of semantics, ease of use

• Provides basic “semantic interoperability”– across domains, across language communities

– does not provide detailed cataloguing rules

• A set of 15 broad “buckets”…


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• Title• Subject• Description• Creator• Publisher• Contributor• Date

• Type• Format• Identifier• Source• Language• Relation• Coverage• Rights


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• Standardisation– Europe: recognition by CEN/ISSS Workshop

Agreement 13874 (2000)– US: ratification by NISO Z39.85 (2001)– to be submitted to ISO in 2002?

• Not a replacement for richer descriptive standards

• Can provide 15 “windows” into richer resource descriptions

– disclose rich description in simple form– semantic cross-walks, mappings to existing data– export rather than create


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• If metadata is language...• … then DC is a “pidgin” language for use by

“tourists on the Internet commons” (Baker)• Different resource description communities

speak different languages– but tourists learn to “pidginise”

• Small vocabulary, simple grammar/structure– Resource has Title “An Introduction to Dublin Core

and the DCMI”– Resource has Subject “Metadata”

• Not as subtle/powerful as separate languages - but useful!


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Extending the Dublin Core

• Does allow for extensibility– but tension between extending DC and choosing other,

richer schema– greater specificity = lesser interoperability?

• Improve semantic precision of DC elements using qualifiers

– element refinements– make the meaning of an element narrower

– value encoding schemes– specify that value is from controlled vocabulary, or

formatted in a standard way

• The “dumb-down” principle• Dublin Core Qualifiers recommendation 2000


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The Dublin Core in context

• In practice, metadata implementers – combine elements from different sources (e.g. DC

plus elements from other schemas, “local” elements)

– refine definitions of elements– constrain use of elements

• Application profiles– if simple DC is a “pidgin”, an application profile is a

“regional idiom or creole”! (Baker)– element set plus policies, guidelines– some DCMI WGs developing application profiles

for specific domains


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DCMI Registry

All Domains

DC Metadata Element Set

Government Libraries etc.

DC-Gov DC–Lib DC– …

AGLS eGMS ….

S.E.P. !!!

DC and interoperability


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Some current DCMI activity

• Application profiles– educational, government, library communities

• Guidelines for expressing DC in XML• Describing “agents”• Recording bibliographic citation• DCMI schemas registry• Continued liaison with e.g. OAI, W3C…. etc

– See Dekkers/Weibel 2002


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DC in government

• DC-gov application profile• DC recommended as basis for resource

discovery of govt information in– Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland, Finland,

Denmark, UK

• Also supra-national agencies– UN Food & Agriculture Organisation; World Health

Organisation….

• European Commission Interchange of Data between Administrations (IDA) programme

– Work item: Managing Information Resources for e-Government (MIREG) to co-ordinate promotion of DC-based framework in public sector in Europe


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DC in government

• UK e-government Metadata Framework– endorsement of simple DC– recognition of need for additional elements for e.g.

records management– recognition of need for thesaurus/controlled

vocabulary

• UK e-government Metadata Standard– application profile

– DC (with refinements and encoding schemes)

– new elements (audience, location, preservation, disposal)

– draft version 0.2 now available for comment– http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/


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Summary

• DC provides simple element set for cross-domain resource discovery

• Supported by open community of practitioners and theorists

• Widely adopted - but not a complete, off-the-shelf solution

• Growing interest in government sector• Central part of UK e-government

Metadata Framework


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References/Further reading

Dublin Core Metadata Initiative:http://dublincore.org/

Dempsey, Lorcan. “Scientific, Industrial, and Cultural Heritage: a shared approach”http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue22/dempsey/

Cathro, Warwick. “Smashing the silos: towards convergence….” http://www.nla.gov.au/nla/staffpaper/2001/cathro2.html

Baker, Tom. “A Grammar of Dublin Core”http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october00/baker/10baker.html

Heery, Rachel & Manjula Patel. “Application Profiles” http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue25/app-profiles/

Dekkers, Makx & Stuart Weibel. “DCMI Progress Report & Workplan for 2002”http://www.dlib.org/dlib/february02/weibel/02weibel.html


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Acknowledgements

UKOLN is funded by Resource: the Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries, the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the UK higher and further education funding councils, as well as by project funding from the JISC and the European Union. UKOLN also receives support from the University of Bath where it is based.

http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/

an introduction to the dublin core and the dcmi gateway group seminar, blenheim palace, thursday 28...

Documents

dcmi gateway group seminar

dublin core metadata

dcmi resource discovery

dcmi standards development

government slide

metadata standards

dc metadata element

metadata semantics