Professional Documents
Culture Documents
by
LOW KE KHOON
ABSTRACT
The study revealed that Dublin Core has indeed been applied in several
countries by various communities (including universities / research institutions,
libraries, government, museums and archives, publishers and other information /
content providers) to enhance cross-disciplinary discovery of electronic resources,
including Web pages. While most of the surveyed projects were consistent in the use
of DC elements, the use of DC qualifiers – element refinement and encoding schemes,
were more varied and inconsistent in these projects. Moreover, the abundant
integration of non-DC elements, subelements and encoding schemes (whether locally
developed or using other established standards) clearly indicated that Dublin Core is
well-positioned to provide a ‘lowest common denominator’ foundation of
interoperability between network resources descriptions across all systems, disciplines
and cultures.
The study also found that “third party metadata model” and “view filter
metadata model” were more popular for the deployment of Dublin Core, as compared
to the “embedded metadata model”. The trend of using automatic metadata creation or
indexing is also beginning to gain momentum, as more metadata tools have been
developed in the recent years. Finally, the majority of the projects surveyed adopted
DC metadata standard for the following reasons to benefit the users: (a) to facilitate
searching and retrieval, (b) to improve resource discovery, (c) to help in the
i
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
ii
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I feel very lucky to have a very caring family, supportive friends and a loving
husband, who have helped me in many ways through the difficult stages during the
research and writing of thesis, and without whom, I would not have been able to
accomplish what I did, today.
iii
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Abstract i
Acknowledgements iii
Table of Contents iv
List of Tables vi
List of Figures vii
Chapter 1 Introduction 1
1.1 Background on Metadata and the Dublin Core Metadata 1
Initiative (DCMI)
1.2 Problem Statement 3
1.3 Organization of Dissertation Chapters 4
Chapter 3 Methodology 15
3.1 Selection of Dublin Core Projects 15
3.2 Data Collection 17
3.3 Presentation of Data 20
Chapter 4 Findings 21
4.1 Consistency with the Use of Dublin Core Elements 21
4.2 Consistency with the Use of Dublin Core Qualifiers – Element 23
Refinements
4.3 Consistency with the Use of Dublin Core Qualifiers – Encoding 30
Schemes
4.4 Overview of Dublin Core Projects 34
iv
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
Chapter 5 Discussion 43
5.1 Metadata Schema 43
5.2 Overview of Dublin Core Projects 48
5.3 Use of Local / Non-DC Elements 50
References 56
Appendices
Appendix A Checklist Used for Survey of Dublin Core Metadata A-1
Projects
Appendix B Projects’ Metadata Schemas Used for Comparison B-1
with DCMES
Appendix C Raw Data Collected for the Use of Subelements C-1
Appendix D Raw Data Collected for the Use of Encoding Schemes D-1
Appendix E Use of Local / Non-DC Metadata Elements E-1
v
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
LIST OF TABLES
Table Page
3.1 Summary of DCMES and Qualifiers 19
4.1 Overview of Dublin Core Elements Adopted by Each 22
Dublin Core Project
4.2 Projects Consistent with the Use of Qualifiers – Element 29
Refinement
4.3 Projects Consistent with the Use of Qualifiers – Encoding 33
Scheme
4.7.1 Submission and Selection of Resources 35
4.7.2 Collection Scope and Coverage 36
4.7.3 Collection - Types of Materials Cataloged 37
4.7.4 Metadata Creators 38
4.7.5 Metadata Tools 39
4.7.6 Metadata Use and Storage 40
4.7.7 Resource Description Model 41
4.7.8 Metadata Search and Retrieval 41
4.7.9 Benefits / Purposes of Deploying Metadata 42
5.1 Projects Ranked in Terms of Consistency on the Use of DC 43
Elements
5.2 Projects Ranked in Terms of Consistency on the Use of DC 44
Subelements
5.3 Projects Ranked in Terms of Consistency on the Use of DC 44
Schemes
vi
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure Page
2.1 Framework for Metadata Scheme Expansion 13
4.1 Percentage Consistency in the Use of DC Elements for 24
Each Project
4.2 Percentage Use by Projects for Each DC Element 25
4.3 Percentage Use of Local Element(s) and DC Elements 26
4.3.1 Subelement(s) Used for Title (A1) based on 16 Projects 27
4.3.2 Subelement(s) Used for Description (A5) based on 16 Projects 27
4.3.3 Subelement(s) Used for Coverage (A6) based on 11 Projects 27
4.3.4 Subelement(s) Used for Relation (A7) based on 8 Projects 28
4.3.5 Subelement(s) Used for Format (C2) based on 13 Projects 28
4.3.6 Subelement(s) Used for Date (C3) based on 16 Projects 28
4.4 Percentage Use of Local Subelements by DC Projects 29
4.5.1 Scheme(s) Used for Source (A2) based on 7 Projects 30
4.5.2 Scheme(s) Used for Language (A3) based on 16 Projects 31
4.5.3 Scheme(s) Used for Subject (A4) based on 16 Projects 31
4.5.4 Scheme(s) Used for Coverage (A6) based on 11 Projects 31
4.5.5 Scheme(s) Used for Relation (A7) based on 8 Projects 32
4.5.6 Scheme(s) Used for Type (C1) based on 14 Projects 32
4.5.7 Scheme(s) Used for Format (C2) based on 13 Projects 32
4.5.8 Scheme(s) Used for Date (C3) based on 16 Projects 33
4.5.9 Scheme(s) Used for Identifier (C4) based on 16 Projects 33
4.6 Percentage Use of Local Schemes by DC Projects 34
vii
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
While metadata is a relatively new term adopted by the library and information
science community, based on the above definitions, what is most intriguing is its
similarity to the traditional MAchine-Readable Cataloging (MARC) standard (Library
1
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
of Congress, 2001b) used for library OPACs (Online Public Access Catalogs)
developed decades ago.
2
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
the semantic precision of the existing DCMES, approved by the Dublin Core Usage
Committee in July 2000 (“Dublin Core Qualifiers,” 2000).
One of the reasons for such popularity of Dublin Core metadata standard is
probably due the four characteristics of DC elements: simplicity, semantic
interoperability, international consensus, and extensibility. However, Dublin Core
metadata standard is still quite unstable due to its relatively short history of
development. Revisions and refinements are continually made to DCMES in order to
accommodate the specific needs and purposes of its practitioners. This has made it
difficult for any evaluation to be done on the effectiveness of the use of DCMES.
Although a variety of guidelines have been developed over the years, there is still a
lack of documentation on how this metadata standard can be deployed effectively.
3
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
4
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
Initially this chapter was intended to review only related research. Considering
the emerging field of metadata, it was considered that the inclusion of literature on
general aspects of the subject would be useful.
Heery (1996) was the first to review five metadata formats - Dublin Core,
MARC, Internet Anonymous Ftp Archive (IAFA) templates, Text Encoding Initiative
(TEI) headers and Universal Resource Characteristics (URCs) - chosen for their
particular relevance to those working within the UK eLIB projects. Comparison was
done in the context of the requirements of bibliographic control, with reference to the
suitability of the various record formats for this purpose. The criteria for comparison of
record characteristics were:
5
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
Following that, two separate metadata projects - BIBLINK (1996) and DESIRE
(Dempsey & Heery, 1997) - carried the research one step further to assess and further
analyze many other metadata standards. Dublin Core was also one of the metadata
standards analyzed in order to provide recommendations on which metadata standard
was more suited for deployment to meet the project’s objectives. To date, research
done by DESIRE project is the single most comprehensive and extensive survey of
over twenty metadata standards, including review of issues such as consideration of the
environment of use, format issues, protocol issues and implementation.
The DESIRE research was also among the first to point out that it is unlikely
that some monolithic metadata format will be universally used. This is for a number of
more or less well known reasons, not least the investment represented by legacy
systems in terms of technology and human effort. In addition the variety of record
formats represent an attempt to meet the diverse requirements of the different
communities. The various communities involved in resource description have vested
significant effort in developing specialized structures to enable rich record descriptions
to be created to fulfil the requirements of their particular domain. These structures are
embodied in systems. In addition the people who maintain these structures have
developed considerable detailed knowledge and skills of a specialist nature. For these
reasons it is unlikely that one format will fulfil their diverse requirements.
6
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
7
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
Thiele (1998) gave a most exhaustive and convincing review of the literature
available from March 1995 to September 1997 based on Dublin Core. In the review,
D-Lib Magazine (http://www.dlib.org) and Ariadne (http://www.ariadne.ac.uk) were
identified as two of the most popular outlets for publishing information about the
Dublin Core and Warwick Framework. Key documents and key researchers – Stuart L.
Weibel (a Senior Research Scientist with the Office of Research and Special Projects
at OCLC), Carl Lagoze (Head of the Cornell Digital Library Research Group at
Cornell University) and Renato Iannella (Senior Research Scientist at the Distributed
Systems Technology Centre in Brisbane, Australia) – were also identified. However,
no other review of such scope has been collated since then.
The third cluster consists of the main flow of literature that describe important
issues, key considerations and challenges faced by implementors of metadata
standards, especially with regard to Dublin Core. A typical paper would describe the
metadata deployment model, how DCMES could be used and stored, with emphasis on
metadata creation procedure and problems (Hillmann, 2001; Hodgson, 1998; Lange &
Winkler, 1997; Taylor, Chris, 1999; Weibel, 1997).
Hodgson (1998) described aptly three areas in which challenges must be met in
creating metadata: resource description, metadata production and interoperability.
Weibel (1997) came up with three models for deploying Dublin Core Description on
the Web:
8
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
Weibel (1997) concluded “much remains to be done to bring the Dublin Core
to a state of sufficient maturity and stability to fulfill its promise as a foundation for
resource discovery on the Net”. He pointed out unsolved problems and future
directions in the development of Dublin Core. These included continued refinement of
Dublin Core elements, user education and application guides, metadata registries, tools
for creation and management of Web-based metadata, and formalized standards of best
practice.
Both Rusch-Feja (1998) and Taylor (1999) described three ways of deploying
and storing metadata:
(1) Embedded in the HTML coding of a Web page using META tags.
(2) As a separate HTML document linked to the resource it describes (the
resource being a non-HTML-file, for example sound, image, or program
file).
(3) In a database linked to the resource. The records may have been directly
9
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
10
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
The format testing involved creating metadata records using the three specified
metadata standards for a selected sample collection. Strengths and weaknesses of each
format when applied to a specific costume item were assessed element by element,
using criteria such as richness of content and structural presentation in a record, as well
as productivity and quality of cataloging. It was interesting to note that though VRA
Core was adopted finally, Zeng (1999) stated that “it may still be possible for an
enhancement of DC to meet the needs of describing three-dimensional objects, like
those for describing images”. This study would probably set the stage for more similar
exploratory or experimental research to be done, especially for digital objects or
formats not yet explored by existing metadata standards, including DC.
Vercoustre (1999) who stated that “there is very little report on the use of DC
metadata for images and photographs” experimented further with the usability of
Dublin Core for interoperable photographs metadata in a CD-ROM, together with
more detailed XML descriptions to support a specific multimedia application.
However, no evaluation or comparison with other metadata standards was made.
11
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
preference, would become more common as the new generation of metadata standards
are able to cater for more specific usage.
Special mention was made as to how the metadata elements were created –
either user supplied or system generated. As more complex metadata architecture was
built in digital library systems, system generated elements would probably play a
bigger role as compared to other simple metadata deployment models.
From the above examples, it can be seen that research done on the applications
of DC standard can generally be divided into two different types: (1) theoretical
exploration of the element set and possible applications to different or specific types of
electronic or web objects, and (2) experimenting with metadata models for the
application of DC standard.
The only research that surveyed the current use of meta fields by non-
information professional and attempted to review and compare the use of DCMES by
information professionals among five DC projects was done by Qin (1998). This is the
first research of its kind to provide valuable insights into the whole process of
computational representation of Web objects in a subject domain, through a four-part
research design, each targeting different aspects of metadata creation and application,
that focused on DC metadata scheme adoption and expansion.
Summarizing these three methods in expanding DC, it can be seen that the
multidimensionality of Web objects were expressed in several different areas (see the
triangle in Figure 2.1). The bottom three are DC's content, rights, and instantiation
packages that have appeared in many metadata projects as basic elements. As the
description areas move to the top, metadata elements become more specialized and
12
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
individualized. In reality, the nature of all these description areas may differ little from
namespace to namespace, but large variations can be expected in naming individual
elements. Most namespaces currently in use in scientific disciplines are
organizationally bound, and very few of them are disciplinary oriented.
Figure 2.1 Framework for Metadata Scheme Expansion (Source: Qin, 1998)
Other interesting points raised were that the DC projects were all institutionally
oriented, except the Medical Core Metadata project which was the only discipline-
wide metadata scheme development. The research concluded that these projects
represent a movement of retro-encoding in current metadata effort within the
information professional community-either from libraries or information centers, or
from research institutions. The researcher predicted that the retro-encoding trend
would continue to grow as the digital resources grow. As metadata technology
13
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
14
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
CHAPTER 3
METHODOLOGY
This chapter will provide details for the source of data collection, the method
used and how the sample was selected. Due to the abundance of Dublin Core project
documentation and information available on the Internet, the research involved
surveying the web sites of Dublin Core projects, with the use of a carefully constructed
checklist.
However, some of the projects were either in foreign languages or lack detailed
definition and explanation for the metadata elements that has been adopted. As the
main focus was to make comparisons between the metadata schema used and DCMES,
the number of DC projects was reduced to twenty-two. Out of the remaining twenty-
two DC projects, sixteen were finally selected for the survey as sufficient and useful
information could be gathered for all main sections of the survey.
15
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
3) BIBLINK (BIBLINK)
URL: http://hosted.ukoln.ac.uk/biblink
4) Business Entry Point (BEP)
URL: http://www.business.gov.au
5) Catalog and Index for French Speaking Health Sites (CISMeF)
URL: http://www.chu-rouen.fr/cismef/cismefeng.html
6) Colorado Digitization Project (Colorado)
URL: http://coloradodigital.coalliance.org
7) Education Network Australia (EdNA)
URL: http://www.edna.edu.au
8) European Libraries and Electronic Resources in Mathematical Sciences
(EULER)
URL: http://www.emis.de/projects/EULER/
9) Florida International University Digital Library (FIU DL)
URL: http://fiudl.fiu.edu/
10) Gateway to Educational Materials (GEM)
URL: http://www.thegateway.org/
11) The Foundations Project - Bridges: Minnesota’s Gateway to
Environmental Information (Minnesota)
URL: http://bridges.state.mn.us/
12) NewsAgent (NewsAgt)
URL: http://www.sbu.ac.uk/litc/newsagent/
13) State Library of Queensland Metadata Project (Queensld)
URL: http://www.slq.qld.gov.au/meta/
14) SAFARI (SAFARI)
URL: http://safari.hsv.se/index.html.en
15) Scout Report Signpost, now called “Scout Report Archives” (Scout)
URL: http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/addserv/signpost/
16) Swedish EnviroNet (Swedish)
URL: http://smn.environ.se/miljonat/english/index.htm
Project codes, listed beside each project title, were used in this study to provide for
easy references.
16
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
The survey form was divided into seven sections, each section intending to
examine specific issues pertinent to metadata deployment and application:
(a) Resource submission and selection
(b) Collection scope and coverage
(c) Metadata creators
(d) Metadata deployment and retrieval
(e) Metadata schema
(f) Tools and aids for metadata creation
(g) Project achievements
17
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
Data collected for section (e) will be compared to DCMES (“Dublin Core
Metadata Element Set, Version 1.1,” 1999) and the Dublin Core Qualifiers (2000).
Each DC element, subelement, and scheme was given a separate code for easier
referencing (see Table 3.1). Information on the projects’ metadata metadata schemas
used for comparison with DCMES is presented in Appendix B.
All the other sections helped to provide an overview of the project nature and
goals. Such data might also give insights or clues for explanation of data collected
from Section (e). There may also be correlation between data collected from different
sections of the survey.
Due to the varying nature of the data to be collected in the survey, both
quantitative and qualitative analysis would be carried out. It was expected that
quantitative data would be collected and presented predominantly from section (e). It
was also planned that results from section (e) of the survey would be supported by
qualitative analysis of the other remaining sections.
One of the problems faced when surveying web sites was that information on
the Internet could be updated frequently and instantly. Due to the large amount of
information and documentation available at some of the project Web sites, much time
was required to systematically go through the hyperlinks provided, in order not to miss
out certain sections while navigating through these Web sites. The information was
saved and printed where possible in order to keep track of which sites and documents
had been read and surveyed.
However, some of these DC projects were more active, thus their Web sites
underwent revision quite frequently. Thus, information and data collected may not
reflect the latest versions of the metadata schema adopted.
18
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
Note
DC Elements with code prefix “A” belongs to “Content” category.
DC Elements with code prefix “B” belongs to “Intellectual Property” category.
DC Elements with code prefix “C” belongs to “Instantiation” category.
19
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
20
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
CHAPTER 4
FINDINGS
In this chapter, results from the survey of sixteen Dublin Core projects listed in
the previous chapter will be documented under two main sections:
a) Comparison of Metadata Schema with DCMES (Version 1.1, 1999) and
Dublin Core Qualifiers (2000)
b) Overview of Metadata Projects
The predominant quantitative data came from analysis of the metadata schemas
adopted by these 16 projects. DCMI recognizes two broad classes of qualifiers (see
Table 3.1):
a) Element Refinements: qualifiers that make the meaning of an element
narrower or more specific.
b) Encoding Scheme: qualifiers that aid in the interpretation of an element
value. These schemes include controlled vocabularies and formal notations
or parsing rules.
Each element refinement was given a code with prefix R (i.e. R1, R2, etc.) and each
encoding scheme was given a code with prefix S (i.e. S1, S2, etc.) in order to identify
them more easily in the representation of data.
21
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
Table 4.1 Overview of Dublin Core Elements Adopted by Each Dublin Core Project
From Table 4.1, two bar charts were plotted: one showing the percentage
consistency calculated for the usage of all DC elements (see Figure 4.1) and the other
showing the percentage of projects that adopted each DC element (see Figure 4.2).
Figure 4.1 showed that more than 50% of the DC elements were adopted by all sixteen
project and Figure 4.2 showed that Source (A2) and Relation (A7) were less frequently
adopted by the projects.
It was observed that most of the projects used at least one subelement(s)
recommended by DCMI for Coverage (A6), Relation (A7) and Date (C3) elements.
The majority of the projects, however, did not use any subelement recommended by
DCMI for Title (A1) – 23%, Format (C2) – 69% and Description (A5) – 75%
elements. Only a small percentage of the projects ranging from 10% to 13% developed
local subelements for all six DC elements.
23
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
ADTP 60
AVEL 93
BEP 100
BIBLINK 80
CISMeF 73
Colorado 100
EdNA 100
EULER 80
Project
FIU DL 100
GEM 87
Minnesota 100
NewsAgt 73
Queensld 100
SAFARI 67
Scout 73
Swedish 67
0 20 40 60 80 100
Percentage Consistency (% )
Figure 4.1: Percentage Consistency in the Use of DC Elements for Each Project
24
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
Source (A2) 44
Coverage (A6) 69
Relation (A7) 50
DC Element
Contributor (B3) 63
Rights Management
75
(B4)
Format (C2) 81
Resource Identifier
100
(C4)
0 20 40 60 80 100
Percentage Use by Projects (% )
25
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
ADTP 100
AVEL 74 26
BEP 88 12
BIBLINK 63 37
CISMeF 58 42
Colorado 100
EdNA 65 35
Project
EULER 55 45
FIU DL 79 21
GEM 62 38
Minnesota 100
NewsAgt 92 8
Queensld 88 12
SAFARI 91 9
Scout 61 39
Swedish 100
0 20 40 60 80 100
Percentage Use (% )
26
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
Title (A1)
44%
56%
0%
Description (A5)
25%
0%
75%
Projects Using Subelement(s) Recommended by DCMI
Projects Using Local Subelement(s) Only
Projects Not Using Subelements
Coverage (A6)
9%
0%
91%
Projects Using Subelement(s) Recommended by DCMI
Projects Using Local Subelement(s) Only
Projects Not Using Subelements
27
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
Relation (A7)
13%
13%
74%
Projects Using Subelement(s) Recommended by DCMI
Projects Using Local Subelement(s) Only
Projects Not Using Subelements
Format (C2)
23%
8%
69%
Projects Using Subelement(s) Recommended by DCMI
Projects Using Local Subelement(s) Only
Projects Not Using Subelements
Date (C3)
13%
6%
81%
28
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
Table 4.2 was presented to find out which of the surveyed projects most
consistently followed all the subelement recommendations (based on raw data
collected in Appendix C). As some of the projects adopted local subelements not
specified in the DCMES, a bar chart (see Figure 4.4) was plotted in order to find out
whether local subelements had been widely adopted.
Table 4.2: Projects Consistent with the Use of Qualifiers – Element Refinement
DC Element Percentage of Project that Project Consistent with the use of
Used All DC Subelement(s) Qualifiers - Element Refinement
Title (A1) 44% AVEL, BIBLINK, EdNA, EULER, FIU
DL, Queensld, Scout
Description 13% EdNA, Minnesota
(A5)
Coverage (A6) 64% AVEL, Colorado, EdNA, FIU DL, GEM,
Minnesota, Queensld
Relation (A7) 13% EdNA
Format (C2) 15% EdNA, GEM
Date (C3) 6% EdNA
Source (A2) 71 29
Language (A3) 94 6
Subject (A4) 81 19
Publisher (B1) 56 44
DC Element
Creator (B2) 31 69
Contributor (B3) 30 70
Rights (B4) 83 17
Identifier (C4) 94 6
0 20 40 60 80 100
Percentage of Projects (% )
29
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
It was observed that the most of the projects surveyed adopted either DCMI-
recommended schemes or their own local schemes. The percentage of projects not
using any scheme ranged from 0% to 29%. In fact, all projects used schemes for four
of the nine DC elements – Language (A3), Subject (A4), Type (C1) and Identifier
(C4).
Following that, Table 4.3 was presented to find out which of the surveyed
projects most consistently followed all the scheme recommendations (based on raw
data collected in Appendix D). As some projects adopted local schemes not specified
in the DCMES, a bar chart (see Figure 4.6) was plotted in order to find out whether
local schemes had been adopted widely.
Source (A2)
29% 29%
42%
Projects Using Scheme(s) Recommended by DCMI
Projects Using Local Scheme(s) Only
Projects Not Using Scheme
30
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
Language (A3)
13% 0%
87%
Subject (A4)
0%
38%
62%
Coverage (A6)
9% 27%
64%
Projects Using Scheme(s) Recommended by DCMI
Projects Using Local Scheme(s) Only
Projects Not Using Scheme
31
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
Relation (A7)
13%
25% 62%
Type (C1)
0%
50% 50%
Format (C2)
15%
8%
77%
32
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
Date (C3)
6%
44%
50%
Identifier (C4)
6% 0%
94%
Table 4.3: Projects Consistent with the Use of Qualifiers – Encoding Scheme
DC Element Percentage of Project Consistent with the Use of
Projects that Used Qualifiers – Encoding Scheme
All DC Scheme(s)
Source (A2) 29% EdNA, Queensld
Language (A3) 7% EdNA
Subject (A4) 10% EdNA
Coverage (A6) 33% EdNA
Relation (A7) 63% AVEL, Colorado, EdNA, GEM, Queensld
Type (C1) 50% AVEL, Colorado, EdNA, EULER, NewsAgt,
Queensld, Scout
Format (C2) 77% AVEL, BEP, BIBLINK, CISMeF, Colorado,
EdNA, EULER, GEM, Minnesota, NewsAgt
Date (C3) 14% EdNA
Identifier (C4) 94% ADTP, AVEL, BEP, BIBLINK, CISMeF,
Colorado, EdNA, EULER, FIU DL, GEM,
Minnesota, NewsAgt, Queensld, SAFARI,
Swedish
33
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
Title (A1) 81 19
Description (A5) 81 19
DC Element
Publisher (B1) 62 38
Creator (B2) 50 50
Contributor (B3) 40 60
Rights (B4) 25 75
0 20 40 60 80 100
Percentage of Projects (% )
From Table 4.7.1, all the sixteen projects restricted submission of resources to a
specified group of people, usually the project participants or consortium members.
Some of them allow resource submission from any interested party or individual as
well. Majority of the projects included a review process as well, with the use of some
selection criteria. As for the collection scope and coverage, the majority of the projects
34
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
- eleven of the sixteen projects - focused their collection to cater to specific subjects
and / or target audiences, such as business, engineering, education or environmental,
etc (as shown in Table 4.7.2). Some of the projects that did not focus their collection
on specific subjects or target audiences restrict the collection to specific geographical
location instead.
35
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
36
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
CISMeF About 70% of the Healthcare disciplines and Main French language Internet
resources are located in medical sciences. resources
France, 16% are from
Canada, in particular the
Quebec Province, 4%
from Switzerland and
Belgium, and 3% from
Africa.
Colorado Colorado State Colorado history, culture, Nil
government and industry.
EdNA Australian curriculum Education & training – useful Nil
for teaching and learning.
Tools for Australian educators
and learners to use.
EULER Global Mathematical resources. Nil
FIU DL Latin America, Florida Current collections focus on Multimedia collections designed to
and FIU Latin American history and support the research and instructional
politics, decorative and goals of the University.
propaganda arts, ancient
architecture, the Florida
environment, religion, and
FIU history.
GEM U.S.A Links to state and national GEM Consortium members.
curriculum standard.
Educational - lesson plans
and teacher guides.
Minnesota Minnesota state Environmental and natural Minnesota state government
resources data and environmental agencies
information
NewsAgt Global Library and information Current awareness, up-to-date news
science.
Queensld Queensland University of All subjects Nil
State Library & Divisions
SAFARI Swedish All subjects Academic research information
Scout Global All subjects Based on Scout Reports.
Swedish Swedish Environment & environmental Swedish governmental agencies,
work, information and data companies and non-government
organizations (NGOs).
Table 4.7.3 showed that almost all the projects used DC elements to describe
either web pages or networked electronic resources, or a combination of both. Only
three of the projects used DC elements to describe non-networked electronic resources
and / or non-electronic resources as well.
37
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
EdNA ! ! X X
EULER ! ! ! !
FIU DL X ! X X
GEM ! ! X X
Minnesota ! ! X X
NewsAgt ! ! X X
Queensld ! X X X
SAFARI ! ! X X
Scout ! ! X X
Swedish ! ! X X
Key: X = No; ! = Yes
Table 4.7.4 showed that metadata creators come from all four categories:
author / creator of resource, publisher, staff / librarians and independent intermediaries,
and Table 4.7.5 showed that the most abundant metadata tools used by the projects are
metadata creation template or software. Furthermore, automatic metadata extraction or
indexing tools, metadata format conversion tools and mapping tools are also used by
some of the projects.
38
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
39
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
As for metadata use and storage, a variety of methods have been employed by
the projects, the most popular one being the use of database records linked to resources
(as shown in Table 4.7.6). It was also observed that “Third party metadata model” has
been deployed by more projects as compared to the other two resources description
models (as shown in Table 4.7.7).
40
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
NewsAgt ! X !
Queensld ! X X
SAFARI ! ! !
Scout ! X !
Swedish ! X !
Key: X = No; ! = Yes
41
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
Table 4.7.8 showed that most of the projects offered searching and browsing
mechanisms for retrieval of the resources. Finally, Table 4.7.9 showed that all projects
deployed metadata for many reasons.
42
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
CHAPTER 5
DISCUSSION
In this chapter, I shall discuss and analyze the results presented in the previous
chapter. The discussion will be divided into two main sections. The first section will
focus on the comparison between the metadata schemas employed by the projects and
DCMES. The second section will provide a general overview of the DC projects
surveyed and correlate the nature of the projects (i.e. collection scope and coverage,
creation, etc.), the metadata schemas and the metadata deployment models adopted.
In terms of the usage of DCMES in general, all the sixteen projects surveyed
adopted more than 50% of the DC elements (see Figure 4.1) and six of the projects
adopted all fifteen DC elements (see Table 4.1). This showed that though not all the
DC elements are equally popular among project implementors, the general trend was to
adopt most of the DC elements.
Based on the percentage consistency in the use of DCMES (see Figure 4.1), the
projects can be ranked (from most consistent to least consistent) as shown in Table 5.1
43
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
In contrast, most of the projects were not as consistent in the usage of qualifiers
recommended by DCMI. From Table 4.2 and Table 4.3, the projects can be ranked in
terms of percentage consistency (from most consistent to the least consistent) in the
use of qualifiers – element refinement / subelement (see Table 5.2) and scheme (see
Table 5.3).
From the consistency ranking shown from Table 5.1 to Table 5.3, one project –
EdNA, significantly stood out from the other projects as it ranked highest in the overall
application of DCMES.
44
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
I think the second opinion is most descriptive, as most of the local elements used by
the projects were actually intended more for resource management and other purposes,
not resource description (see Appendix E).
One interesting point is that though EdNA is the most consistent in following
the DCMES, it is also among one of the projects that employ many non-DC elements.
Thus, EdNA can be said to be exemplary in its attempt to adopt DCMES fully and yet
still able to extend its metadata schema to accommodate other more specific
requirements in resource description and management.
45
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
other hand, most of them employed subelements recommended by DCMI for Coverage
(A6), Relation (A7) and Date (C3), as shown in Figure 4.3.3, 4.3.4 and 4.3.6.
Analysis was also done on the remaining nine DC elements, which do not have
subelements recommended by DCMI (see Figure 4.4). It was interesting to note that
there are projects that adopted local subelements for each of the remaining eight DC
elements, except for Type (C1). In fact, the percentage of projects with subelements
for Publisher (B1), Creator (B2) and Contributor (B3) ranges from 44% to 70%. This
is a strong indication of the fact that the project implementors felt that more elaborate
description is necessary for these three DC elements belonging to the “Intellectual
Property” category. The main subelements used for these three DC elements were
“Personal Name” and “Corporate Name”. This bears similarity to the use of author and
publisher fields with extensive descriptions in catalog records in the MARC format.
Results from the analysis of encoding schemes used by the sixteen projects,
however, differed greatly from that of subelements. DCMI recommended schemes for
nine of the fifteen DC elements (see Table 3.1). The most significant difference is that
most of the projects used schemes– either recommended by DCMI, local schemes
(developed locally or using other established schemes), or a mixture of both - for the
nine DC elements. The percentage of projects not using any scheme ranged from 0%
for Language (A3), Subject (A4), Type (C1) and Identifier (C4) (see Figure 4.5.2,
4.5.3, 4.5.6, 4.5.9), to only 29% for Source (A2) (see Figure 4.5.1).
Particular elements to note are the Subject (A3) and Identifier (C4), where a
mixture of both DCMI-recommended schemes and local schemes have been used
concurrently. Eight of the sixteen projects - AVEL, BEP, EdNA, FIU DL, GEM,
46
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
Minnesota, NewsAgt and Swedish – were found to have developed their own local
controlled vocabulary or classification schemes for the Subject element. This is not
unusual due to the fact that specific subjects limited the scope of their collections (see
Table 4.7.2). Besides the use of local schemes, many other established thesaurus,
controlled vocabulary listings and classification systems were used as well. Some
examples of them are the Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT), ERIC,
ICONCLASS, Mathematics Subject Classification Scheme (MSC), Computing
Classification System (CCS) and Common European Research Information Format
(CERIF) Classification System.
47
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
regarding the use of qualifiers. Thus, this resulted in the larger discrepancies observed,
especially between the use of DCMI-recommended schemes and local schemes.
Results from Table 4.7.1 showed that many different communities were
involved in resource submission. However, these communities were usually specified
to a certain consortiums or participating memberships. A few key groups of interested
parties can be identified:
(a) Universities, learning institutions, and research organizations,
(b) Libraries, archives and museums,
(c) Publishers and other content providers, and
(d) Government agencies
48
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
4.7.8, that many of the projects are subject gateways, as users are able to browse the
collection via subject categories
As for the type of material that has been cataloged, it is found that all projects
except Queensland used Dublin Core to describe networked electronic resources, and
that the majority of them specifically describe Web pages (see Table 4.7.3). This is a
significant discovery as the deployment of Dublin Core is not only restricted to HTML
Web pages, but more for describing other material types available on the network
(Internet or Intranet) as well.
A further look into the metadata creators and metadata creation tools might
provide some clues as to how Dublin Core was created and handled by the projects.
According to the DCMI, the Dublin Core is intended to be usable by non-catalogers as
well as resource description specialists, the results shown in Table 4.7.4 showed that
this statement is indeed an accurate reflection of this aspect on the applications of
49
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
Dublin Core. For the surveyed projects, authors or creators of the resources, and
librarians have been active players in the creation of metadata. Publishers and other
independent intermediaries have also began to play a role as well (see Table 4.7.4).
50
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
Following Burnett’s theory (1999), the local elements that have been adopted
by twelve of the DC projects surveyed were categorized as “intrinsic metadata
elements” or “extrinsic metadata elements”. It was found that many of the local
elements used fit into both categories. Some of the local elements that clearly fit as
“intrinsic metadata elements” are:
(i) AC.Creator, AC.DateCreated, AGLS.Availability,
AVEL.Comments (see Table E1 and E2)
(ii) BIBLINK.Price, BIBLINK.SystemRequirements,
BIBLINK.Checksum (see Table E3)
(iii) Type of access, Cost, Sponsorship (as described in Appendix E)
(iv) EDNA.Approver, EDNA.Entered, EDNA.Indexing, EDNA.Version
(see Table E4)
(v) EULER.Record.Creator, EULER.Delivery,
EULER.Delivery.Description (see Table E5)
(vi) Cataloger’s Note (see Table E6)
(vii) GEM.Cataloging (see Table E7)
(viii) NewsAgent.Contact (see Table E8)
(ix) Source of Cataloging (see Table E9)
However, there are some local elements that could not fit into any of the two
categories. Such elements were applied specifically for evaluative purposes or for
important and useful description tailored to a particular subject area, for example
education. Some elements used for such purposes are:
(i) EDNA.Audience, EDNA.Review, EDNA.Reviewer (see Table E1 and
Table E4)
(ii) Target (as described in Appendix E)
(iii) GEM.Audience, GEM.Grade, GEM.Pedagogy, GEM.Quality,
GEM.Standards (see Table E7)
(iv) Safari.TargetGroup (see Table E10)
51
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
The above analysis suggested strongly that projects that deployed “third part metadata
model” or “view filter model” (see Table 4.7.7) and made use of more sophisticated or
complex database programs or software (see Table 4.7.5) were inclined to add more
local elements, especially metadata elements of extrinsic characteristics, in order to
provide information on the metadata itself. These projects are AVEL, BEP, BIBLINK,
CISMeF, EdNA, EULER, FIU DL, GEM, NewsAgt and SAFARI.
Last, but not least, the benefits of using Dublin Core to describe networked
electronic resources were indicated clearly in Table 4.7.9. The reasons for and benefits
of the use of Dublin Core metadata standard by DC projects to describe networked
electronic resources are clearly stated as follows:
(i) To facilitate searching and retrieval
(ii) To improve resource discovery
(iii) To help in the management of resources, and
(iv) For interoperability and / or crosswalk between different metadata
formats.
These reasons are in fact all the characteristics and uses of any metadata standards, not
just limited to Dublin Core metadata standard. Thus, it can be concluded that the main
purposes and final goals for deploying any metadata standard are the same, no matter
which metadata standard was selected for implementation.
52
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
CHAPTER 6
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
The first part of this study has attempted to analyze in detail the metadata
schemas used in sixteen DC projects by comparing the consistency in adopting the
DCMES, and by comparing the usage of each DC element.
In terms of the usage of DCMES in general, all the sixteen projects surveyed
adopted more than 50% of the DC elements and six of the projects adopted all fifteen
DC elements. This indicated that though not all the DC elements are equally popular
among project implementors, the general trend was to adopt most of the DC elements.
In contrast, most of the projects were not as consistent in the usage of qualifiers
recommended by DCMI.
In addition, 75% of the projects surveyed was found to have adopted non-DC
metadata elements as well. The number of non-DC metadata elements used to
supplement the DC elements ranged from one to as many as ten. Moreover, the
percentage of non-DC metadata elements used as compared to the total number of
metadata elements used in a project can be as high as 45%. Moreover, most of the
local elements used by the projects were actually intended more for resource
management and other purposes, not resource description. This proved that Dublin
Core is in fact able to provide minimal resource description, with the flexibility for
project implementors to tailor its use for their local applications or specific domains.
EdNA was the only project that most consistently followed the DCMES,
including the use of DC qualifiers. However, though EdNA is the most consistent in
following the DCMES, it is also among one of the projects that employ many non-DC
elements. Thus, EdNA can be said to be exemplary in its attempt to adopt DCMES
fully and yet still able to extend its metadata schema to accommodate other more
specific requirements in resource description and management.
53
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
Upon further analysis of subelements used for each DC element, it was found
that most of the projects used DC subelements for Coverage, Relation and Date. In
contrast, subelements were not used by most projects for Title (A1), Description (A5)
and Format (C2). There is a strong indication that the project implementors felt that
more elaborate description is necessary for Publisher, Creator and Contributor
elements, which belong to the “Intellectual Property” category. The main subelements
used for these three DC elements were “Personal Name” and “Corporate Name”. This
bears similarity to the use of author and publisher fields with extensive descriptions in
catalog records in the MARC format.
In contrast, further analysis of schemes used for each DC element indicated that
project implementors placed more emphasis on local schemes for Source, Coverage,
Type and Date, as compared to schemes recommended by DCMI. For Subject and
Identifier, a mixture of both DCMI-recommended schemes and local schemes had
been used concurrently. Eight of the sixteen projects - AVEL, BEP, EdNA, FIU DL,
GEM, Minnesota, NewsAgt and Swedish – were found to have developed their own
local controlled vocabulary or classification schemes for the Subject element. This is
not unusual due to the fact that specific subjects limited the scope of their collections.
54
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
The second part of this study revealed that Dublin Core has indeed been
applied in several countries by various communities, including (a) universities,
learning institutions, and research organizations, (b) libraries, archives and museums,
(c) publishers and other content providers, and (d) government agencies, to enhance
cross-disciplinary discovery of electronic resources, including Web pages.
The study also found that “third party metadata model” and “view filter
metadata model” were more popular for the deployment of Dublin Core, as compared
to the “embedded metadata model”. The trend of using automatic metadata creation or
indexing is also beginning to gain momentum, as more metadata tools have been
developed in the recent years. From the abundance of metadata creation and indexing
tools, it became clear that metadata creation and retrieval have not been a problem to
project implementors. However, this is only true for projects that involved
professionals from many different areas, especially from computer science. Efforts
from libraries, universities or government agencies alone, would not be able to deal
with the implementation of such complicated computer systems and structures.
55
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
REFERENCES
Andresen, Leif. (2000). Brief communication: 7th Dublin Core workshop. Online
Information Review, 24(1), 85-87.
Burnett, Kathleen, Ng, Kwong Bor, & Part, Soyeon. (1999). A comparison of the two
traditions of metadata development. Journal of the American Society for Information
Science, 50(13), 1209-1217.
Campbell, Debbie. (1999). Dubin Core metadata and the Australian MetaWeb project
[Online]. Available: http://www.nla.gov.au/nla/staffpaper/dcampbell1.html [2001,
June 29].
Crosswalks from the Alexandria Metadata Schema to Other Schemas [Online]. (1997,
January 24). Available: http://www.alexandria.ucsb.edu/public-
documents/metadata/crosswalks.html [2001, July 1]
Day, Michael. (2000, February 13). Metadata: mapping between metadata formats
[Online]. Available:
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/interoperability/ [2001, July 1].
Dempsey, Lorcan, & Heery, Rachel. (1997, March 19). Specification for resource
description methods, part 1, a review of metadata: a survey of current resource
description formats [Online]. Available:
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/desire/overview/ [2001, June 28].
Dempsey, Lorcan, & Weibel, Stuart L. (1996, July / August). The Warwick Metadata
Workshop: a framework for the deployment of resource description [Online]. D-Lib
Magazine. Available: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july96/07weibel.html [2001, June 28].
Dublin Core Metadata Element Set (DCMES), version 1.1: reference description
[Online]. (1999, July 2). Available: http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. [2001, June
28].
56
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI): frequently asked questions [Online]. (2001).
Available: http://dublincore.org/resources/faq/#whatismetadata [2001, June 28].
Fullerton, Karen, Greenberg, Jane, McClure, Maureen, Rasmussen, Edie, & Stewart,
Darin. (1999, April). A digital library for education: the PEN-DOR project. The
Electronic Library, 17(2), 75-82.
Heery, Rachel. (1996, October). Review of Metadata Formats. Program, 30(4), 345-
373.
Hillmann, Diane. (2001, April 12). Using Dublin Core [Online]. Available:
http://dublincore.org/documents/usageguide/ [2001, June 28].
Hudgins, Jean. (1999). Getting mileage out of metadata: applications for the library.
Chicago: American Library Association.
Lange, Holley R., & Winkler, B. Jean. (1997). Taming the Internet: metadata, a work
in progress. In Godden, Irene (Ed.), Advances in Librarianship: Vol. 21 (pp. 47-72).
San Diego: Academic Press.
57
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
Rusch-Feja, Diann. (1998). Metadata: standards for retrieving WWW documents (and
other digitized and non-digitized resources) [Online]. Available:
http://www.stsci.edu/stsci/meetings/lisa3/ruschfejad.html [2001, June 28].
Thiele, Harold. (1998, January). The Dublin core and Warwick framework: A review
of the literature, March 1995-September 1997 [Online]. D-Lib Magazine. Available:
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january98/01thiele.html [2001, June 28].
Thornely, Jennie. (1999). The how of metadata: metadata creation and standards
[Online]. Available: http://www.slq.qld.gov.au/pub/staff/catcon99.htm [2001, June
29].
Vercoustre, Anne-Marie, & Paradis, Francois. (1999). Metadata for photographs: from
digital library to multimedia application. In Abiteboul, S. (Ed.), Research and
Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Vol.
1696, pp. 39-57). New York: Springer.
Weibel, Stuart. (1997, October / November). The Dublin Core: a simple content
description model for electronic resources. Bulletin of the American Society for
Information Science, 24(1), 9-11.
Weibel, Stuart. (1999, April). The state of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, April
1999 [Online]. D-Lib Magazine. Available:
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/april99/04weibel.html [2001, June 28].
Weibel, Stuart, & Hakala, Juha. (1998, February). DC-5: The Helsinki Metadata
Workshop, a report on the workshop and subsequent developments [Online]. D-Lib
Magazine. Available: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/february98/02weibel.html [2001, June
28].
Weibel, Stuart, Iannella, Renato & Cathro, Warwick. (1997, June). The 4th Dublin
Core Metadata Workshop report [Online]. D-Lib Magazine. Available:
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/june97/metadata/06weibel.html [2001, June 28].
58
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
Weibel, Stuart L., & Koch, Traugott. (2000, December). The Dublin Core Metadata
Initiative: mission, current activities, and future directions [Online]. D-Lib Magazine,
6(12). Available: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/december00/weibel/12weibel.html [2001,
June 28].
Weibel, Stuart L., & Lagoze, Carl. (1997). An element set to support resource
discovery: the state of Dublin Core, January 1997. International Journal of Digital
Libraries, 1, 176-186.
Zeng, Marcia Lei. (1999). Metadata elements for object description and representation:
a case report from a digitized historical fashion collection project. Journal of the
American Society for Information Science, 50(13), 1193-1208.
59
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
APPENDIX A
Checklist Used for Survey of Dublin Core Metadata Projects
A-1
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
A-2
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
iii) Contributor
iv) Rights
c) Instantiation
i) Type
ii) Format
iii) Date
iv) Identifier
5) Are controlled vocabulary / keywords used for any of the DC elements in 2)?
Which of the elements require use of controlled vocabulary / keywords?
6) Are there any additional local elements? If yes, what are the local elements,
and how many local elements are added? State whether sub-elements and /
or schemes are used.
7) How many elements (both DC and local) are used, in total?
8) Are there any elements that are automatically inserted?
A-3
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
APPENDIX B
Projects’ Metadata Schemas Used for Comparison
with DCMES
ADTP
Metadata standard [Online]. (Updated: 2000, February 23) Available:
http://www.library.unsw.edu.au/thesis/adt-ADT/info/metadata.html [2000, September
5]
AVEL
Metadata manual [Online]. (Last modified: 2000, April 18). Available:
http://avel.edu.au/mdmanual/start.html [2000, September 5]
BEP
Business Entry Point metadata "How To" guide, Version 1.3 [Online]. (1998,
December 15). Available:
http://about.business.gov.au/bep/agencies/provinfo/metadata/metadata-guide.pdf
[2000, August 31]
BIBLINK
BIBLINK core field semantics (Work Package 8) [Online]. (1998, July 28). Available:
http://hosted.ukoln.ac.ul/biblink/wp8/fs/bs-semantics.html [2000, September 1]
CISMeF
The use of Dublin Core metadata in a structured health resource guide on the Internet
[Online]. (Last updated: 2000, June 20). Available: http://www.chu-
rouen.fr/cismef/cismefdc.html [2000, August 28]
Colorado
Medata matrix [Online]. (No Date). Available:
http://coloradodigital.coalliance.org/Mdmatrix.html [2000, August 28]
B-1
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
EdNA
EdNA Metadata Standard, Version 1.1 [Online]. (Last modified: 2001, May 28).
Available: http://standards.edna.edu.au/metadata/index.html [2001, March 10]
EdNA metadata elements [Online]. (Last updated: 2001, January 10.). Available:
http://standards.edna.edu.au/metadata/elements.html [2001, March 10]
Overview table: the EdNA metadata standard [Online]. (Last updated: 2001, May 1).
Available: http://standards.edna.edu.au/metadata/overview.html [2001, March 10]
EULER
EULER metadata profile [Online]. (2000, August 26). Available:
http://euler.lub.lu.se/engine/metadata.html.en [2001, March 31]
FIU DL
Metadata model [Online]. (Last updated: 1998, December 8). Available:
http://www.fiu.edu/~diglib/metadata/model.htm [2000, August 31]
Metadata creation and maintenance manual [Online]. (Last revised: 1998, December
10). Available: http://www.fiu.edu/~diglib/metadata/index.html [2000, August 31]
GEM
GEM Developer’s WorkBench: GEM controlled vocabularies [Online]. (Last
modified: 2000, November 1). Available:
http://www.geminfo.org/Workbench/Workbench_vocabularies.html [2001, May 20]
GEM element list [Online]. (Last updated: 2001, February 13). Available:
http://www.geminfo.org/Workbench/Metadata/GEM_Element_List.html [2001, May
20]
Minnesota
Quam, Eileen. (2000, August). Minnesota metadata guidelines for Dublin Core
metadata: training manual [Online]. Available:
http://bridges.state.mn.us/bestprac/training.pdf [2000, August 28]
Quam, Eileen, & Olson, Robert. (Version: 1999, August 8). Minnesota Metadata
Guidelines - Dublin Core (MMG - DC): user guide For Dublin Core elements
[Online]. Available: http://bridges.state.mn.us/MMG-DCUserGuide.PDF [2000,
August 28]
NewsAgt
NewsAgent metadata elements: proposed definitions for NewsAgent Version 2
[Online]. (Date modified: 1999, July 12). Available:
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/newsagent/metadata/ [2000, August 31]
B-2
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
Queensld
Superceded guidelines for embedding metadata in State Library’s Web pages using
Dublin Core [Online]. (Last revised: 2001, April 30). Available:
http://www.slq.qld.gov.au/meta/guidelinesdc.htm [2001, March 30]
Superceded templates for deploying metadata (using Dublin Core Metadata Element
Set) in the State Library of Queensland [Online]. (Last revised: 2001, April 30).
Available: http://www.slq.qld.gov.au/meta/templatesdc.htm [2001, March 30]
Thornely, Jennie. (2000). Metadata and the deployment of Dublin Core at State
Library of Queensland and Education Queensland, Australia [Online]. OCLC Systems
& Services, 16(3), 118-129. Available:
http://www.slq.qld.gov.au/pub/staff/metadeploy.htm [2001, March 17]
SAFARI
SAFARI fields [Online]. (Last update: 1999, October 13). Available:
http://www.lub.lu.se/~colm/safari/elements.html [2000, August 25]
Scout
Glassel, Aimee D., & Wells, Amy Tracy. (1998). Scout Report Signpost: design and
development for access to cataloged Internet resources. Journal of Internet Cataloging,
1(3), 15-45.
Solock, Jack, Wells, & Amy Tracy. (1999). Scout Report Signpost (Signpost). In
Wells, Amy Tracy, Calcari, Susan, & Koplow, Travis (Eds.), The amazing Internet
challenge: how leading projects use library skills to organize the Web, pp. 203-222.
Chicago: American Library Association, 1999.
Swedish
Schema for Dublin Core in the Swedish EnviroNet (SMN) [Online]. (Last updated:
2000, May 31). Available: http://smn.environ.se/schema/schema.htm [2001, May 31]
B-3
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
APPENDIX C
Raw Data Collected for the Use of Subelements
C-1
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
C-2
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
C-3
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
R6 - Requires listings)
R7 - Is Part Of
R8 - Has Part
R9 - Is Referenced By
R10 - References
R11 - Is Format of
R12 - Has Format
8 Queensld Nil Nil
Table C7: Additional DC Elements (A2, A3, A4, B1, B2, B3, B4, C1, C4) with
Subelements Not Stated in the DCMI Recommendations
Project DC Element(s) with Subelement(s) / Sub-Subelement(s) Used
Subelement(s) / Sub-
subelement(s)
ADTP B2 DC.Creator.PersonalName
DC.Creator.PersonalName.address [Email]
AVEL B1, B2, B3 PersonalName
CorporateName
C-4
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
BEP A4 Industry
Topic
Good Service
Occupation
Staff
Land Building
Plant Equipment
B2 CorporateName
Jurisdiction
B4 Text
URL
BIBLINK B2, B3 Organization
CISMeF A4 Keywords
Colorado B1, B2, B3 PersonalName
CorporateName
EdNA Nil Nil
EULER B2, B3 PersonalName
CorporateName
FIU DL A2 Identifier [Source Std. No.]
Date.Created [Has Part(s): Date of Source]
B2, B3 Qualifier
Role
GEM A3 Subject path
Keywords
B1 NameCorporate [OnlineProvider / Publisher]
Role
Email
Postal
Phone
Contact
Homepage
B2 NamePersonal
NameCorporate
Email
Postal
Phone
Fax
Affiliation
Homepage (URL)
Role
B4 LOCSPEC (URL)
Agent
Use
Price code
C4 LOCSPEC
SID
SDN
Public_ID
Minnesota B1, B2 Corporate Name
Personal Name
B3 Many subelements, i.e. Page Designer, Illustrator,
etc. (Use TagGen DC table for full-listing)
NewsAgt Nil Nil
Queensld A2 Date
B1 CorporateName.Address
B2, B3 PersonalName
CorporateName
SAFARI B1, B2 CorporateName
CorporateName.Address PersonalName
C-5
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
PersonalName.Address
Scout Nil Nil
Swedish A4 EnvObjective
EnvThreat
Sector
Nature
Chemistry
Species
General
EnvData.Program
EnvData.Medium
EnvData.Variable
B1 CorporateName
CorporateName.Address
B2 CorporateName
CorporateName.Address
PersonalName
PersonalName.Address
C-6
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
APPENDIX D
Raw Data Collected for the Use of Encoding Schemes
D-1
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
D-2
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
L - Environment Work
L - Environment Data / Statistics
L - Medium
L - Variable
D-3
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
D-4
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
D-5
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
L - PURL
12 NewsAgt S – URL (implied) Nil
13 Queensld S – URL, URN L - ISBN
L - ISSN
14 SAFARI S – URL Nil
15 Scout Nil L - Cataloging Internet Resources
L - Bibliographic Formats & Standards
16 Swedish S – URL Nil
Table D10: Additional DC Elements (A1, A5, B1, B2, B3, B4) with Scheme(s) Not
Specified in DC Schema
D-6
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
APPENDIX E
Use of Local / Non-DC Metadata Elements
Eight local elements were used for CISMeF, they are Institution, City, Province
/ State, Country, Target, Type of access, Cost, and Sponsorship.
Table E1: Local Element Name(s) and Definition(s) used for AVEL Project
1) AGLS.Availability
How the resource can be obtained or contact information, will be displayed to the
user as significant information regarding the availability of the resource. Primarily
used for non-electronic resources when a user needs to physically obtain copies of
the resource or provide access to the resource. Include information on registration
and authentication requirements for electronic resources, i.e. available only to staff
and student of Queensland University.
2) EdNA.Review
Functions like a book review. Reviews could be created as separate Web pages,
with the AVEL software storing the URL of the review(s) as part of the information
about a resource.
3) AC.Creator
The person responsible for creating / modifying The metadata pertaining to a
resource.
4) AC.DateCreated
Date the metadata was created or last modified.
5) AVEL.Comments
Use this element for any comments regarding The creation of The metadata,
especially to record any significant related issues. Used as a repository of
anecdotal information for future reference.
Table E2: Local Element Name(s) and Definition(s) used for BEP Project
1) AGLS.Function
The business function of the agency to which this resource is related.
2) AGLS.Availability
The point of contact from which the resource can be obtained, primarily intended
for resources, such as physical objects and services, that cannot be acquired
electronically, but instead need to be ordered in physical form.
Table E3: Local Element Name(s) and Definition(s) used for BIBLINK Project
1) BIBLINK.Checksum
A hash value computed for authentication purposes, generated from the resource.
Automatically using the checksum too.
2) BIBLINK.Edition
A text string indicating the version or edition of the resource.
3) BIBLINK.Extent (implied sub-element of DC.Format)
The ‘size’ of the resource, e.g. in bytes, number of files, or number of CD-ROMs.
4) BIBLINK.Frequency
The frequency of issue if a serial publication
E-1
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
Table E4: Local Element Name(s) and Definition(s) used for EdNA Project
1) EDNA.Audience
A category of user for whom the resource is intended.
2) EDNA.Approver
E-mail of person or organization approving the item for including in EdNA. For
administrators who directly administer items in the EdNA Online database this
element is automatically assigned.
3) EDNA.CategoryCode
A numerical code derived from the database tables which support the EdNA Online
Browse Categories
4) EDNA.Entered
Data item was entered as an entry in the Online item database, used for
management purposes. Created automatically by EdNA Online database software
and should not be encoded into the metadata of source documents.
5) EDNA.Indexing
To what extent should Edna Online indexing (“spidering”) software follow links from
this page
6) EDNA.Review
A third party review of the resource. Either a short evaluative comment or a more
formal review pointed to by a URL.
7) EDNA.Reviewer
Name of person and / or organization or authority affiliated with the review
8) EDNA.Version
Version of the EdNA metadata standard applied, for administrative tracking
purposes.
Table E5: Local Element Name(s) and Definition(s) used for EULER Project
1) EULER.Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context: The purpose of
this field is to identify the resource in other ways than those provided by the other
fields. This can be serial name, page-, issue- or volume-numbers for journal
articles or similar. (Can be used differently in different databases, e.g. ISO 4-1984).
2) EULER.Fulltext = Full text
The fulltext of web-pages and other resources available as a whole
3) EULER.Event.Location = Event location
For Conference proceedings, location of event for/at which the resource described
in the record was created
4) EULER.Event.Date = Event Date
For Conference proceedings, date of event for/at which the resource described in
the record was created
E-2
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
Table E6: Local Element Name(s) and Definition(s) used for FIU DL Project
1) Record Identifier
A unique 9 digit number assigned to each record in the Repository database. Used
to search record numbers within the FIU Digital Library and used with a cgi script
to create URL for Z39.50 gateway searches. When new metadata record is
created, the Record Identifier is the same as the 9-digit barcode no. that has been
assigned to an object (image, sound) or group of objects). Barcode can be
scanned into this field.
2) Next in Workflow (No definition provided.)
3) Public Note
To provide additional information on the resource that does not fit into any other
metadata element or to further describe an element that uses controlled terms. A
free text field for any information the cataloger thinks the patron may need to know
to understand the resource that is not already provided for in another Dublin Core
field. The Note element is used to provide any additional information needed to
assist the user in knowing about the resource being viewed. A common use for this
element is to give credit to an individual who donated the image or other resource
to the FIU Digital Library.
4) Cataloger’s Note
An internal administrative note for the person(s) creating and updating the
metadata which may be about the metadata creation and maintenance process or
some aspect on the management of the resource. Not displayed to the user and is
only searchable using the "Word(s) Anywhere" command on the search templates.
Table E7: Local Element Name(s) and Definition(s) used for GEM Project
1) GEM.Audience
Indicates the special nature or needs of the individual, class, group, etc. being
taught. Information about (1) An educational tool for whom? and (2) Who is the
ultimate beneficiary?
E-3
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
2) GEM.Cataloging
Cataloging Agency provides basic information about the person or agency that
created the GEM catalog record.
3) GEM.Duration
Contains a brief textual description of the duration of the activity or lesson. Time
and/or number of sessions needed to conduct the activity/lesson as specified in the
educational resource.
4) GEM.EssentialResources
Additional resources / materials needed for effective use of the resource being
cataloged
5) GEM.Grade
Specifies the grade, grade span or educational level(s) of the target audience of
the resource
6) GEM.Pedagogy
Refers to the method suggested to present the resource and to evaluate student
progress, - Teaching methods, student groupings, and assessment methods
specified in the educational resource. Prerequisites can also be noted.
7) GEM.Quality
Quality Indicators element is a means of assessing the quality of instructional
materials, - Assessment of an educational resource using a rating scale from 1
(poor) to 5 (excellent).
8) GEM.Standards
State and/or national academic standards mapped to the entity being described.
- Description of a state or national standard that has been given to the educational
resource being cataloged either by the cataloging agency, the creator of the
educational resource, or some independent person or agency.
Table E8: Local Element Name(s) and Definition(s) used for NewsAgt Project
1) NewsAgent.Contact
A contact point for further information about the resource. May be used to indicate
the supplier or help-desk for a product. Use a name, an email address or a
combination of both as the value of this element.
Table E9: Local Element Name(s) and Definition(s) used for Queensld Project
1) Keywords
Web authors to provide a series of keywords or phrases about the contents of the
page separated by commas(,).
2) Description
Web authors to give a freetext description or abstract of the contents of the page.
Giving a good description of the content of the page in this element is important as
most search engines do index Web pages with metadata using information from
the description element.
E-4
ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library.
Table E10: Local Element Name(s) and Definition(s) used for SAFARI Project
1) Safari.TargetGroup
Primary target group for the resource. One way of classifying the information in
SAFARI therefore, is to specify which target group the information is intended for.
Today, there are four pre-defined alternatives when metadata-labelling research
information: General/schools, Companies/organisations, Students of higher
education, Researchers/experts.
Table E11: Local Element Name(s) and Definition(s) used for Scout Project
1) Date URL Last Verified
Refers to the last time the resource’s location was verified as working.
2) Date of Scout Report Review
Refers to the date the resource actually appeared in any scout report
3) Resource Location
Indicates the domain or affiliation of the site. Currently includes: commercial,
education, government, military, network, and organization. Based on the 6 current
top-level domains (.com, .edu, .gov, .mil, .net, and .org).
4) Source of Cataloging
Not publicly displayed. Identifies the individual responsible for cataloging a
resource.
5) Record ID
Not publicly displayed. A unique number automatically assigned at the time a
Signpost record is created.
6) Scout Report Review URL
Refers to the address of the scout report in which the resource was reviewed.
7) Scout Publication
Not publicly displayed. Serves as an in-house element that allows them to quickly
determine whether a resource is from the Scout Report or any of the subject-
specific scout reports.
E-5