The Accrual Policy for a library subject collection for which new books and journals are bought:

Active [Encoding scheme = (Proposed) DCCD Accrual Policy]

The Accrual Policy for a special collection to which items are added only of they are donated or deposited by an external agent:

Passive [Encoding scheme = (Proposed) DCCD Accrual Policy]

Information about the conditions under which items are being added to a collection helps a user to find a collection or, perhaps more importantly, to select from amongst a number of candidate collections. Specifically this property will support searches of the form:

Which collections have Accrual Policy of "Closed"?

Which Accrual Methods are in use for collections with Accrual Policy of "Active"?

etc

It also helps a user to interpret a collection that they have found or selected by some other criteria.

See the mailing list archives of the WG, especially Jul 2004.

[n/a]

(Proposed encoding scheme) DCCDAccrualPolicy
See http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/dcmi/collection-DCCDAccrualPolicy/

(Proposed element) accrualPeriodicity
See http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/dcmi/collection-accrualPeriodicity/

(Proposed element) accrualMethod
See http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/dcmi/collection-accrualMethod/

The International Standard for Archival Description (ISAD(G)), Second Edition (2000) is a descriptive standard for archival records. It can be applied to units of description at any level from the collection (or fonds) to the individual item, and includes a related element:

• 3.3.3 Accruals

  Purpose: To inform the user of foreseen additions to the unit of description.

  Rules: Indicate if accruals are expected. Where appropriate, give an estimate of their quantity and frequency.

ISAD(G) does not itself provide a machine-readable binding.

The Encoded Archival Description (EAD) DTD is a standard for encoding archival finding aids using SGML or XML. It includes an XML element:

• <accruals> Accruals

  Information about anticipated additions to the materials being described. Can indicate quantity and frequency. Can also be used to indicate that no additions are expected.

This is an XML element, not an RDF property.

If existing DC applications for collection-level description capture this data, they probably do so as part of the value of a dc:description element. Strictly speaking this information is probably not part of "an account of the content of the resource", and the use of dc:description in this way does not conform to the semantics of that property - and for this reason the proposal is for an element rather than an element refinement of dc:description.

The introduction of a distinct property allows the metadata creator to represent this information separately from the description of the scope and content of the collection. As the property is not proposed as a refinement of one of the 15 DC elements available in the "Simple DC" application profile, the information represented by this proposed property will be lost during "dumb-down" to "Simple DC".

The term is proposed by the Dublin Core Collection Description Working Group. One of the primary aims of the WG is the development of a Dublin Core Application Profile (DCAP) for collection-level description, i.e. for the description of a collection as a resource, rather than the description of the individual items that make up that collection.

Records of the activity of the WG are available in the mailing list archives.

The current draft of the Collection Description Application Profile is available at http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/dcmi/collection-application-profile/