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Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, Version 1.0: Reference Description

Introduction

This document is the reference description of the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set. See the Dublin Core Home Page (http://dublincore.org) for further information about the workshops, reports, working group papers, projects, and new developments concerning the Dublin Core Metadata Element set.

The current list of elements and their general definitions were finalized in December 1996. The elements and their names are not expected to change substantively from this list, though the application of some of them is currently experimental and subject to varying interpretation from implementation to implementation.

Note that elements have a descriptive name intended to convey a common semantic understanding of the element. To promote global interoperability, a number of the element descriptions may be associated with a controlled vocabulary for the respective element values. It is assumed that other controlled vocabularies will be developed for interoperability within certain local domains. In the element descriptions below, a formal single-word label (expressed in all upper case) is specified to make the syntactic specification of elements simpler for encoding schemes. Each element is optional and repeatable.

Questions or comments regarding the Dublin Core Element Set may be addressed to
http://dublincore.org/about/feedback/.

Element Descriptions

1. Title
   Label: Title
   The name given to the resource, usually by the Creator or Publisher.
2. Author or Creator
   Label: Creator
   The person or organization primarily responsible for creating the intellectual content of the resource. For example, authors in the case of written documents, artists, photographers, or illustrators in the case of visual resources.
3. Subject and Keywords
   Label: Subject
   The topic of the resource. Typically, subject will be expressed as keywords or phrases that describe the subject or content of the resource. The use of controlled vocabularies and formal classification schemas is encouraged.
4. Description
   Label: Description
   A textual description of the content of the resource, including abstracts in the case of document-like objects or content descriptions in the case of visual resources.
5. Publisher
   Label: Publisher
   The entity responsible for making the resource available in its present form, such as a publishing house, a university department, or a corporate entity.
6. Other Contributor
   Label: Contributor
   A person or organization not specified in a Creator element who has made significant intellectual contributions to the resource but whose contribution is secondary to any person or organization specified in a Creator element (for example, editor, transcriber, and illustrator).
7. Date
   Label: Date
   A date associated with the creation or availability of the resource. Recommended best practice is defined in a profile of ISO 8601 ( http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime ) that includes (among others) dates of the forms YYYY and YYYY-MM-DD. In this scheme, the date 1994-11-05 corresponds to November 5, 1994.
8. Resource Type
   Label: Type
   The category of the resource, such as home page, novel, poem, working paper, technical report, essay, dictionary. For the sake of interoperability, Type should be selected from an enumerated list that is under development in the workshop series.
9. Format
   Label: Format
   The data format and, optionally, dimensions (e.g., size, duration) of the resource. The format is used to identify the software and possibly hardware that might be needed to display or operate the resource. For the sake of interoperability, the format should be selected from an enumerated list that is currently under development in the workshop series.
10. Resource Identifier
    Label: Identifier
    A string or number used to uniquely identify the resource. Examples for networked resources include URLs and URNs (when implemented). Other globally-unique identifiers, such as International Standard Book Numbers (ISBN) or other formal names would also be candidates for this element.
11. Source
    Label: Source
    Information about a second resource from which the present resource is derived. While it is generally recommended that elements contain information about the present resource only, this element may contain metadata for the second resource when it is considered important for discovery of the present resource.
12. Language
    Label: Language
    The language of the intellectual content of the resource. Recommended best practice is defined in RFC 1766
13. Relation
    Label: Relation
    An identifier of a second resource and its relationship to the present resource. This element is used to express linkages among related resources. For the sake of interoperability, relationships should be selected from an enumerated list that is currently under development in the workshop series.
14. Coverage
    Label: Coverage
    The spatial and/or temporal characteristics of the intellectual content of the resource. Spatial coverage refers to a physical region (e.g., celestial sector) using place names or coordinates (e.g., longitude and latitude). Temporal coverage refers to what the resource is about rather than when it was created or made available (the latter belonging in the Date element). Temporal coverage is typically specified using named time periods (e.g., Neolithic) or the same date/time format ( http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime ) as recommended for the Date element.
15. Rights Management
    Label: Rights
    A rights management statement, an identifier that links to a rights management statement, or an identifier that links to a service providing information about rights management for the resource.