|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| digitization & metadata | north carolina dublin core digital collections and exhibits ancillary dublin core standard |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
The purpose of this ancillary document to the NC ECHO Dublin Core Implementation Guidelines (http://www.ncecho.org/dig/ncdc2007.shtml) is to promote the creation of quality metadata for the description of digital collections and exhibits. This application focuses on the description of digital collections and exhibits as a whole. It does not replace or substitute metadata needed to manage the digital resources within your digital collections or exhibit. North Carolina Exploring Cultural Heritage Online project is constructing a Catalog of Online Collections and Exhibits that is based upon this Dublin Core Application. Institutions creating digital collections and exhibits are encouraged to create Dublin Core data for inclusion using the <meta> tag in the homepage of the collection or exhibit and to register their collection/exhibit with NC ECHO for inclusion in our catalog. Assistance in creating this metadata can be obtained by contacting Kathy Wisser, NC ECHO Metadata Coordinator. Another advantage of creating this metadata is that the application presented here will be compliant with other applications of Dublin Core. Therefore, this metadata may be used by other aggregators as well (including OAI harvesters). DUBLIN CORE ELEMENTS Title (Required): Title of the online collection of exhibit as it appears on the website. Omit initial articles (the, a, an). Title.Alternative (Optional): Alternative title(s) for access, including translations, acronyms, etc. Omit initial articles (the, a, an). Creator (Required if appropriate): Persons, families, or corporate bodies of primary responsibility for the creation of materials represented in the exhibit or collection. Use separate creator fields for multiple creators. Do not confuse with Publisher which refers to the institution(s) responsible for providing the online collection and exhibit. The creator field, instead, refers to the creator(s) of the original materials that are being represented. Use the Library of Congress Name Authority File or chapters 12 - 14 of Describing Archives: a Content Standard to form the name entered in this field. scheme="lcnaf" Contributor (Optional): Persons, families, or corporate bodies of secondary responsibility for the creation of the materials represented in a digital collection or exhibit. Use separate contributor fields for multiple contributors. Examples may include but are not limited to illustrators, annotators, editors, publishers, etc. Use the Library of Congress Name Authority File or chapters 12 - 14 of Describing Archives: a Content Standard to form the name entered in this field. (see Creator) scheme="lcnaf" Publisher (Required): Institution(s) responsible for providing the digital collection or exhibit. For collections or exhibits that are collaborative (multiple institutions), use a separate publisher field for each. For those collections or exhibits hosted by an institution that is not responsible for its creation, include a separate publisher field for that as well. For collaborative projects, include multiple Publisher fields, identifying each partner in the project. Subject (Required): Topic(s) of the content of the online collection or exhibit. These can be expressed by topical terms, personal names, corporate bodies or family names, for significant people, organizations, events and topics reflected in the collection or exhibit. Use multiple subject elements for multiple terms. Provide both specific and broad terms when applicable. The subject field is connected to the Description field (below) in that subjects must be reflected in some way in the description field. This is called "grounding" your subject terms and is discussed in detail below. Note that Creator(s) should be repeated in the Subject element, as materials by someone are also considered to be about that person (corporate body or family). Use controlled vocabularies for the formation of these subject terms: Library of Congress Subject Headings = topics and events Library of Congress Name Authority File or DACS 12 - 14 = personal or family names, corporate bodies Description (Required): A free text description of the online collection or exhibit. Use multiple description elements to describe the contextual (biographical and/or historical information about the creator(s) of the materials in the collection) and content (what the materials are about). The description field also affords the ability to use natural language terms for topics, persons and families, corporate bodies, places, eras, and events that controlled vocabularies dictate in other fields. This field is connected to Subject (above), Coverage.Spatial (below), and Coverage.Temporal (below) in that it justifies the inclusion of specific terms. Grounding subject terms The idea of grounding subject terms (included in "subject terms" are the elements Subject, Coverage.Spatial, and Coverage.Temporal) is an important one in metadata creation. The connection between free text description and controlled vocabulary terms provides explanation for the controlled vocabulary term. In addition to being able to provide natural language, it explains the retrieval of a certain collection or exhibit when a search is done. This prevents "blind references" and provides a better opportunity for users to make relevance judgments about a particular retrieval set. Assigning subject terms without grounding them (referring to them) in the description does not provide information to the user about why this collection or exhibit is about a term used in the controlled vocabulary. Description (Required if appropriate): For those projects that include resources explicitly created for the K-12 audience, include a separate Description element that details the types of resources and any additional information that will be of use to teachers in assessing the relevance of the project. Description (Required if appropriate): In addition to the description of the project as outlined above, if the digital collection or exhibit has received funding from a sponsoring agency for the creation of the project, include a description statement about that funding. For projects funded by NC ECHO, include: <meta name="DC.Description" content="This project [or Project Name] is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) under the provisions of the federal Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA), as administered by the State Library of North Carolina, a division of the Department of Cultural Resources. Funding and support was provided through North Carolina ECHO (Exploring Cultural Heritage Online) project (http://www.ncecho.org)."> Language (Required): Include languages that are part of the materials in the collection or exhibit. Use multiple language elements for multiple languages. Use ISO 639-2b format for expressing language. Common language codes are listed in the NCDC Implementation Guidelines referred to above. scheme="iso639-2b" Rights (Required): Include a rights statement about the materials in the collection or exhibit and the use of digital surrogates. The Rights statement can be explicit or may include a URL to an institutional policy. Type (Required): The nature or genre of the resource you are describing. For all online collections or exhibits, use the value "Collection." Required: <meta name="DC.Type" scheme="DCMIType" content="Collection"> scheme="DCMIType" Coverage.Spatial (Strongly recommended): Geographical places or regions represented in the materials in the collection or exhibit. Use multiple Coverage.Spatial fields for multiple geographical terms. This can include places that the materials reference as well as location of creation of the materials. For North Carolina locations, include both local and county Coverage.Spatial terms. Use Library of Congress Subject Headings for geographical terms. For regional representations in North Carolina (more than three counties), use the regional terms listed below: Coverage.Temporal (Optional): Time periods or common eras associated with the materials in the collection or the exhibit. Era concerns information on the social, cultural, economic, and political context in which the cultural heritage materials represented in the online collection or exhibit are tied. This field is intended to organize collections around time periods significant to U.S. history. Only use Coverage.Temporal, though, when it adds meaning to understanding the collection or exhibit you are describing. Era terms for American History
*Note that the dates for these eras are flexible. They are provided to give you a general range for the era, and should not be considered definitive from a historical perspective. Aside from the date ranges for wars (which do begin on a certain date and end on a certain date), eras are fluid occurrences and subject to a multitude of interpretation. We are attempting to tie cultural heritage materials, particular people, corporate bodies, and families with social, cultural, economic, and intellectual climates, and we are using the era labels to achieve that. These are not meant to convey any historical interpretation beyond the general understandings of American history. scheme="lcsh" Format.Medium (Strongly recommended): Include formats of original material represented in the digital collection or exhibit. For multiple formats, use multiple elements. Use separate Format.Medium elements to represent the digital representations as well. For Original formats: Use the Thesaurus for Graphical Materials II vocabulary. For Digital formats: Use the MIME media types located at: Format.Extent (Required): The number or items represented in the collection or exhibit. Estimate if you do not have an exact count and include the word "About". Optional: provide separate Format.Extent elements for counts of specific formats of items. In employing this option, all extent statements should add up to the total number of items in the collection or exhibit. DO NOT provide both a total number and a group of extent by format fields, as this would represent a doubling of the amount of items in your collection or exhibit and could be misleading. Source (Strongly recommended): The physical collection(s) from which items have been derived to form the collection or exhibit. Use separate elements for multiple collections. Include collection title, number or other identifying information (such as institution in the case of collaborative projects). For those items that are not part of a collection (such as a single book), you may optionally include general information about the repository which holds the item, and any identification information (i.e., call number) for the item. Relation.IsPartOf (Strongly recommended if appropriate): If the digital collection or exhibit is part of a larger program of digital collections and exhibits that has an identity of its own, indicate the name of that program. Relation.IsFormatOf (Strongly recommended if appropriate): In the case of exhibits, if the digital exhibit is fashioned after a physical exhibit, include information about the physical exhibit. Include exhibit name, location, and dates. Do not confuse with Relation.HasVersion discussed below. Relation.HasVersion (Strongly recommended if appropriate): In the case of digital collections, if an exhibit has been fashioned from the materials in the digital collection, include information about the physical exhibit. Include exhibit name, location, and dates. Relation.HasPart (Strongly recommended if appropriate): For those digital collections and exhibits that have been broken into groupings, use the Relation.HasPart element to identify those groupings. Use multiple Relation.HasPart elements to represent each group individually. The groupings should be named as they are in the digital collection or exhibit. The sum of these elements will form something like a table of contents for the digital collection or exhibit. Date (Required): Record the dates of the materials represented in the digital collection or exhibit through a representative date span using YYYY/YYYY format. For a single item collection or exhibit, use the single date (YYYY or YYYYMMDD). Do not confuse this with the publication date of the online exhibit or collection. scheme="iso8601" Identifier (Required): Record the URL of the homepage of the digital collection or exhibit including the full path (http://) scheme="URI" Audience (Required if appropriate): This element identifies appropriate audiences for the online collection or exhibit. In NC ECHO COCE, the application of this field is limited to the availability of resources created directly for the K-12 audience. Therefore, if a digital collection or exhibit includes resources directly targeted to the K-12 audience (lesson plans, learning objects, Kid's page, teacher resources, etc.) include an audience element with a value of "K-12" <meta name="DC.Audience" content="K-12"> EXAMPLE The following is an example of the Dublin Core application for digital collections and exhibits. This metadata record was provided by Nicholas Graham at the North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for the North Carolina Postcards collection (http://www.lib.unc.edu/dc/nc_post/).
<meta name="DC.Title" content="North Carolina Postcards"> | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
