Largely prompted by the need to write up a discussion paper on 'structured
values' for the DC Usage Board, I've been working on writing up an
'abstract model' for DC metadata records.
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/dcmi/abstract-model/
As the introduction says, "the primary purpose of [the abstract model] is
to provide a reference model against which particular DC encoding
guidelines can be compared, in order to facilitate better mappings and
translations between different syntaxes". However, I strongly suspect
that documenting the DC abstract model in this way will also be very
helpful to people who want to use DC properties and constructs within
their own non-DCMI metadata applications.
The abstract model documented here builds on the abstract models used in
the "Guidelines for implementing Dublin Core in XML" recommendation
http://dublincore.org/documents/dc-xml-guidelines/
but takes on board more of the richness offered by the RDF model and some
of the functional requirements that have been articulated by the DC-Agents
WG (in order to link to descriptions of 'agents').
I'm putting this document forward as a working draft, which means that I'd
like to see it taken forward as a proposed recommendation and ultimately,
hopefully(!), a recommendation.
Comments are very welcome...
Andy
--
Distributed Systems, UKOLN, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY, UK
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ukoln/staff/a.powell +44 1225 383933
Resource Discovery Network http://www.rdn.ac.uk/
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