(Message sent on behalf of Tom Baker, Chair of the DCMI Usage Board)


Dear all,

Besides initiating processes for the review and approval of
new Dublin Core elements and qualifiers, the DCMI Usage Board
has revamped the way Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
documents its work.  The documents, accessible from
http://dublincore.org/usage/, currently include:

  -- Up-to-the-minute listings of all current Elements,
     Element Refinements, Encoding Schemes, and DCMI Type
     Vocabulary terms [7,8].  These will supersede Web
     documents currently in use as authoritative sources of
     up-to-date information on DCMI metadata terms.

  -- For the historically- or archivally-minded, a complete
     listing of all Elements, Element Refinements, and Encoding
     Schemes -- including past versions of terms that have been
     corrected or revised [5].  Each term has a cross-reference
     to a related Decision, and each such Decision points to
     supporting documentation in the archive.  This master
     file is used as the source for periodically generating
     the updated listings [7,8].

  -- DCMI Usage Board Decisions [4], each of which is
     numbered for unambiguous identification.

  -- DCMI Usage Board Review of Application Profiles [15] --
     principles and criteria by which the Board will review
     profiles which use or extend Dublin Core in various ways.

At its latest meeting, held on 12-13 May 2002 in Bath with
financial support from JISC, the Usage Board revised and
simplified its model for conferring status on terms, making it
easier for working groups to put new terms of proven usefulness
into the DCMI-maintained namespaces.

The Usage Board now distinguishes the following:

  -- "Recommended" Elements, Element Refinements, and
     DCMI Type Vocabulary terms useful for resource discovery
     across domains.

  -- "Conforming" Elements and Element Refinements --
     terms for which an implementation community has a
     demonstrated need and which conform to the grammar
     of Elements and Element Refinements, though without
     necessarily meeting the stricter criteria of usefulness
     across domains or usefulness for resource discovery.

  -- "Registered" Encoding Schemes -- terms which identify
     parsing rules or controlled vocabularies useful for
     interpreting particular metadata values.  All encoding
     schemes, new and legacy, have the status of Registered.

The new distinction between "Recommended" versus "Conforming"
replaces one of "Recommended as Cross-Domain" versus
"Recommended as Domain-Specific" -- a model that had
presupposed usefulness for resource discovery.  After its
first year of experience with the older model, the Usage Board
recognized the difficulty presented by numerous "borderline"
proposals and acknowledged a need for a managed and persistent
namespace where terms of demonstrated need could be placed
without following acceptance criteria in their strictest
possible interpretations.

It should be noted that there was some dissent within the
Usage Board on this move towards inclusiveness.  There are
several ways to "draw the line" between terms that are
taken in versus terms that are kept out.  All Board members
recognized a difficult trade-off between exclusiveness
and inclusiveness -- between purity of ideals versus
meeting demand.  New terms recognized as Conforming under
the new model include three element refinements for Date
(dateAccepted, dateCopyrighted, and dateSubmitted).  See [1]
and [2] for complete documentation of these and other recent
decisions along with their rationales.

In order to catch any errors that may have crept into the
documents, especially in the links among them, the new and
updated Usage Board documents will be available for public
scrutiny and comment until 15 August, after which they will
replace many of the documents currently in use, such as [2,3,4],
as authoritative sources of information on DCMI terms.

Generic addresses for the elements and qualifiers [14,15]
will be redirected to [6], and the generic address for the
DCMI Type Vocabulary [16] will be redirected to [9].

Tom Baker, Chair, Usage Board


[1] http://dublincore.org/usage/decisions/#Decision-2002-01
[2] http://dublincore.org/documents/1999/07/02/dces/
[3] http://dublincore.org/documents/2000/07/11/dcmes-qualifiers/
[4] http://dublincore.org/documents/2000/07/11/dcmi-type-vocabulary/
[5] http://dublincore.org/usage/decisions/
[6] http://dublincore.org/usage/terms/dc/
[7] http://dublincore.org/usage/terms/dc/current-elements/
[8] http://dublincore.org/usage/terms/dc/current-schemes/
[9] http://dublincore.org/usage/terms/dcmitype/
[10] http://dublincore.org/usage/documents/profiles/
[11] http://dublincore.org/usage/decisions/2000/
[12] http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-namespace/
[13] http://dublincore.org/usage/documents/profiles/
[14] http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/
[15] http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmes-qualifiers/
[16] http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-type-vocabulary/
[17] http://dublincore.org/usage/decisions/#Decision-2002-02


--
Dr. Thomas Baker                                [log in to unmask]
Institutszentrum Schloss Birlinghoven          mobile +49-171-408-5784
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft                          work +49-30-8109-9027
53754 Sankt Augustin, Germany                    fax +49-2241-144-1408