From: BIBLINK WP4: Format Conversion Feasibility, ed. Rachel Heery, (contributors: Robina Claphan, Michael Day, Brian Holt, Neil Wilson). September 1997.

Format Conversion Feasibility Notes on mapping of national libraries' metadata requirements to Dublin Core

1.1 Introduction

Section 6 (Metadata Requirements of National Libraries) of BIBLINK D1.1 Metadata Formats identified the metadata requirements of the national libraries participating in BIBLINK. These metadata requirements were reduced in BIBLINK D4.1 Format Conversion Feasibility to support only a CIP-type function, and were further refined at a meeting in Mo I Rana in July 1997.

The purpose of this document is to map these metadata requirements to Dublin Core, and especially to identify where both qualifiers and extensions would have to be made to the Dublin Core elements.

D1.1 suggests that national libraries wish to create records in various flavours of MARC and would intend to apply detailed cataloguing rules to the content of the records. The formats used by the participating libraries vary, but are usually based on ISBD or AACR2. For the purpose of this paper, it is assumed that ISBD or AACR2 style formats would be desired for the national libraries' metadata requirements for electronic publications.

1.2 DC Qualifiers

The DC-4 meeting in Canberra (Weibel, et al. 1997) proposed the formal identification of the structure of elements and possible qualifiers in Dublin Core. In response, Rebecca Guenther (1997) has recently produced a proposal for Dublin Core qualifiers/substructure, which includes specific proposals for the qualifiers "scheme" and "type". These proposals are currently under discussion in the Dublin Core community. Guenther reiterates the Canberra meeting's insistence that the "type" qualifier should only be used to refine elements, not to extend their semantics and that each element should have a default meaning. The qualifiers can be understood as follows:

• SCHEME interprets the value in the content and is generally based on external standards.
• TYPE refines the definition of the data element itself.

If SCHEME and TYPE can not meet these principles, then an extensibility mechanism should be used.

1.3 Extensibility

Where the national libraries' metadata requirements can not be described using Dublin Core - with or without qualifiers - then new elements can be proposed.

1.4 The mapping

1.5 Notes

• In the BIBLINK context, there may be a requirement to extend DC metadata to include the following elements:
  • Edition/Version
  • Extent
  • Frequency of Publication
  • Place of Publication
  • Price
  • System Requirements
• Some interaction with name authority files for DC Creator and Contributor would be useful or desirable. Guenther already has a DC SCHEME for the Library of Congress Name Authority File, but additional SCHEMES might be required for partner libraries. Thought could also be given to the inclusion of particular subject schemes rather than just keywords, then LCSH or classification numbers, for example, could be included
• If an ultimate mapping to UNIMARC or other MARC formats is desirable, it may be worth trying to maintain differences between personal and corporate in both Author and Contributor fields.

1.6 Some examples

Please note that the following examples are not intended to be definitive.

1.6.1 Web Page:

Metadata for a Web page, when translated into the BIBLINK data elements (incorporating Dublin Core), might look like the following:

1.6.2 CD-ROM:

In comparison, a commercially published CD-ROM could be described using the BIBLINK data elements (incorporating Dublin Core) in the following way:

1.7 References

Guenther, R. Dublin Core qualifiers/substructure: a proposal. 15 April 1997. http://www.loc.gov/marc/dcqualif.html

Weibel, S., Iannella, R. and Cathro, W. The 4th Dublin Core Metadata Workshop report. D-Lib Magazine, June 1997. http://www.dlib.org/dlib/june97/metadata/06weibel.html

Maintained by Michael Day of UKOLN, University of Bath.
Last updated 18-Sep-1997.