This class has been a wild roller coaster. I think the most eye opening aspect of it was realizing how pervasive and wide spread is the world of metadata. Metadata is used to define and control our world through different schemas, but the underlying aspect is the same. It makes me want to start organizing my entire life by metadata and realizing the far flung impacts that metadata has had and is still having on our world. I think that is why I like Dublin Core so much. While it is a simple enough schema to learn and employ it is so customizable it can be tailored to nearly any collection. It was fascinating to see how many times it cropped up in our descriptions of digital repositories or even as some sort of basis for other schemas. Managing metadata is definitely a skill worth learning.
Tag Archives: Dublin Core
Dublin Core Metadata Terms
I’ve worked a little bit with Dublin Core and felt I had a fair grasp of how it worked and the fifteen core elements that it contained. So I was a bit shocked when I looked at the Dublin Core Metadata Terms and saw a long list of information in tabulated format. At first I was more than a bit intimidated, but after taking a closer look it started making a bit more sense. Rather than listing the DC elements this document lists and defines all the terms associated with the metadata schema. It rather reminds me of the data dictionaries mentioned here and discussed in my last post.
However, rather than give a simple list of terms to define the metadata the “Dublin Core Metadata Terms” document fully describes the term. This document is indeed meta-metadata or metadata about metadata, it lists the term, gives a definition of what it is used for and further documents how it relates to the terms around it. I specifically appreciated that the links provided in each “entry” of the lists gave links which gave even more information such as whether the entry was the most up to date term used or if it had been supplanted by a newer one.
Madam Librarian 