Metadata · Dublin Core

The Central Salesian Archive is progressively adapting the database that holds the records of the archival units to the international metadata standard known as Dublin Core. Associating the individual fields of each catalogue record with the metadata system improves the retrieval of information through general-purpose search engines. Dublin Core is made up of a core of elements essential for describing any digital material (e.g. documents, video, images, physical resources, books, CDs, and objects such as works of art, etc.) over the network.

The Dublin Core set: use and applicability

The Dublin Core metadata community arose in Ohio (USA) within the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), which brings together producers, authors and rights holders of networked documentation, in order to provide tools for access to digital resources. The consortium of users that was formed began to implement a metadata architecture meeting the needs of information vendors and producers.

The minimum set proposed in December 1996 consists of 15 basic elements and has also been extended to sub-elements or qualifiers: the standard is under development, but the so-called “core of 15 description elements” has remained stable. Each element is defined using a set of 10 attributes derived from the ISO 11179 standard.

The Workshop held at the Deutsche Bibliothek in Frankfurt in October 1999 presented the developments and applications of this set of elements, originally conceived for descriptions generated by authors of Web resources, which has attracted the interest of communities such as museums, agencies and commercial organisations. This concept of transversality and interoperability is also present at European level as a core theme of the Fifth Framework Programme, within the Information Society Technologies Programme (1998-2002): the aim is to promote a new integrated approach to information that meets users’ needs, offers services and technologies to all activities, and among its strategies establishes the consensus needed for standardisation at all levels.

The updated version of the DC format is characterised by: simplicity of use, since it is addressed both to non-cataloguers and to specialists; semantic interoperability, establishing a common network of data agreed in their meaning and value; the promotion of a useful tool for an infrastructure at international level; flexibility, since it allows the data structure to be integrated and developed with different semantic meanings appropriate to the context of application. It also aims to offer itself as an alternative, for digital material, to the more elaborate cataloguing formats found in the library world (e.g. the MARC record formats). These same characteristics, in the perspective of the digital library, make it one of the formats applicable to the description of objects on different types of media, including electronic media, to the benefit of the various communities that continuously interact (libraries, the publishing world, producers, authors, etc.).

Confirming this perspective, in some experimental European projects on the cataloguing of digital and digitised resources (such as META-LIB, which involves the Universitätsbibliothek of Göttingen, the Deutsche Bibliothek itself, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek and the Deutsches Bibliotheksinstitut within the subproject on modernisation and rationalisation in academic libraries), a process has been launched to harmonise metadata standards with the national rules on the description of printed publications.

Clearly the library world will have to reflect on the use of this format with respect to the needs and objectives of cataloguing and services. For this reason, and in order to better assess its applicability, the ICCU produced the Italian translation of the latest version of the DC.

Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, Version 1.1: Italian translation

Description of the elements making up the “Dublin Core” set

This document is the reference Italian translation of version 1.1 of the “Dublin Core Metadata Element Set”. It replaces the previous version 1.0. For further information on workshops, papers, working group documents, projects and new developments concerning the DC metadata element set, see the DC home page: http://purl.oclc.org/dc/.

The document summarises the updated definitions of the DC metadata elements with respect to those originally defined in [RFC2413]. These new definitions will be officially released as Version 1.1.

These definitions use a formal standard for the description of metadata elements. This formalisation helps to improve consistency with other metadata communities and increases the clarity, scope and internal consistency of the DC metadata element definitions.

Each Dublin Core element is defined using a set of ten attributes from the ISO/IEC 11179 [ISO11179] standard for the description of data elements. These include:

• Name – The label assigned to the data element
• Identifier – The unique identifier assigned to the data element
• Version – The version of the data element
• Registration Authority – The entity authorised to register the data element
• Language – The language in which the data element is specified
• Definition – A statement that clearly represents the concept and essential nature of the data element
• Obligation – Indicates whether the data element is always or only sometimes required (contains a value)
• Datatype – Indicates the type of data that can be represented in the value of the data element
• Maximum Occurrence – Indicates any limit to the repeatability of the data element
• Comment – A remark concerning the application of the data element

Fortunately, six of the ten attributes listed above are common to all the DC elements. These are, with their respective values:

The attributes above are not repeated in the definitions given below, as they form part of the definitions.

The definitions provided include both the conceptual and the representational form of the Dublin Core elements. The Definition attribute “captures” the semantic concept, and the Datatype and Comment attributes “capture” the data representation.

Each Dublin Core definition refers to the resource being described. A resource is defined in [RFC2396] as “anything that has identity”. For the purposes of Dublin Core metadata, a resource will typically be an information or service resource, but may be applied more broadly.

Element: Title

Name: Title; Identifier: Title; Definition: A name given to the resource

Comment: Typically, a Title will be a name by which the resource is formally known.

Element: Creator

Name: Creator; Identifier: Creator; Definition: An entity primarily responsible for making the content of the resource

Comment: Examples of a Creator include a person, an organisation or a service. Typically, the name of a Creator should be used to indicate the responsible producing entity.

Element: Subject

Name: Subject and Keywords; Identifier: Subject; Definition: The topic of the content of the resource.

Comment: Typically, a Subject will be expressed as keywords, key phrases or classification codes that describe a topic of the resource. Recommended best practice is to select a value from a controlled vocabulary or formal classification scheme.

Element: Description

Name: Description; Identifier: Description; Definition: An account of the content of the resource

Comment: Description may include but is not limited to: an abstract, a table of contents, a reference to a graphical representation of content or a free-text account of the content.

Element: Publisher

Name: Publisher; Identifier: Publisher; Definition: An entity responsible for making the resource available in its present form

Comment: Examples of a Publisher include a person, an organisation or a service. Typically, the name of a Publisher should be used to indicate the entity

Element: Contributor

Name: Contributor; Identifier: Contributor; Definition: An entity responsible for making contributions to the content of the resource

Comment: Examples of a Contributor include a person, an organisation or a service. Typically, the name of a Contributor should be used to indicate the entity

Element: Date

Name: Date; Identifier: Date; Definition: A date associated with an event in the life cycle of the resource

Comment: Typically, Date will be associated with the creation or availability of the resource. Recommended best practice for encoding the date value is a 10-character number in the form YYYY-MM-DD as defined in http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime, a profile of the ISO 8601 standard. In this scheme, the date element 1994-11-05 corresponds to 5 November 1994. Many other schemes are possible, but if used, they must be uniquely identifiable

Element: Type

Name: Resource Type; Identifier: Type; Definition: The nature or genre of the content of the resource

Comment: Type includes terms describing general categories, functions, genres or aggregation levels for content. Recommended best practice is to select a value from a controlled vocabulary (for example, the working draft list of Dublin Core Types [DCT1]). To describe the physical or digital manifestation of the resource, use the Format element

Element: Format

Name: Format; Identifier: Format; Definition: The physical or digital manifestation of the resource

Comment: Typically, Format may include the media type or dimensions of the resource. Format may be used to determine the software, hardware or other equipment needed to display or operate the resource. Examples of dimensions include size and duration. Recommended best practice is to select a value from a controlled vocabulary (for example, the list of Internet Media Types [MIME] defining computer media formats

Element: Identifier

Name: Resource Identifier; Identifier: Identifier; Definition: An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context

Comment: Recommended best practice is to identify the resource by means of a string of alphabetic or numeric characters conforming to a formally defined identification system. Examples of such identification systems include the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), including the Uniform Resource Locator (URL), the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) and the International Standard Book Number (ISBN)

Element: Source

Name: Source; Identifier: Source; Definition: A reference to a resource from which the present resource is derived

Comment: The present resource may be derived from the Source resource in whole or in part. Recommended best practice is to identify the resource by means of a string of alphabetic or numeric characters conforming to a formally defined identification system

Element: Language

Name: Language; Identifier: Language; Definition: The language of the intellectual content of the resource

Comment: Recommended best practice for the values of the Language element is defined by RFC 1766 [RFC1766], which includes a two-letter language code (taken from the ISO 639 standard [ISO639]), optionally followed by a two-letter country code (taken from the ISO 3166 standard [ISO3166]. For example, “en” for English, “fr” for French, “it” for Italian or “en-uk” for English used in the United Kingdom

Element: Relation

Name: Relation; Identifier: Relation; Definition: A reference to a related resource

Comment: Recommended best practice is to reference the resource by means of a string of alphabetic or numeric characters conforming to a formally defined identification system

Element: Coverage

Name: Coverage; Identifier: Coverage; Definition: The extent or scope of the content of the resource

Comment: Typically, Coverage will include spatial location (a place name or geographic coordinates), temporal period (a period label, date or date range) or jurisdiction (such as a named administrative entity). Recommended best practice is to select a value from a controlled vocabulary (for example, the Thesaurus of Geographic Names [TGN]) and, where appropriate, to use named places or time periods in preference to numeric identifiers such as sets of coordinates or date ranges

Element: Rights Management

Name: Rights Management; Identifier: Rights; Definition: Information about rights held in and over the resource

Comment: Typically, a Rights element will contain a rights management statement for the resource, or reference a service providing such information. Rights information often encompasses Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), Copyright and various Property Rights. If the Rights element is absent, no assumptions can be made about the status of these and other rights with respect to the resource

Dublin Core / UNIMARC mapping (English version)

Metadata Element Set - ver. 1.1: Italian translation (the text is taken from https://www.iccu.sbn.it/ - updated 29.05.2023)

see also the website: https://www.dublincore.org/specifications/dublin-core/dcmi-terms/