RFC 5013
The Dublin Core Metadata Element Set
RFC 5013: The Dublin Core Metadata Element Set 💖
Okay bestie, this one is a whole vibe 🎀. It comes from the Network Working Group and was written by J. Kunze of the University of California and T. Baker of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. It's dated August 2007 and sits in the Informational category 🦋. It obsoletes RFC 2413, and the header doesn't list any Updates entry, so it's not claiming to update anything else 💅.
Status of This Memo ✨
This memo gives information to the Internet community. It is not an Internet standard of any kind, so don't go treating it like one 🙈. Distribution of this memo is unlimited, so share away 💜.
Abstract 🌸
This document defines fifteen metadata elements for describing resources in a cross-disciplinary information environment. Fifteen elements, all for describing stuff 🧚.
1. Introduction ✨
The Dublin Core Metadata Workshop Series started in 1995 with an invitational workshop. It brought together librarians, digital library researchers, content experts, and text-markup experts, all trying to build better discovery standards for electronic resources 🍓. The metadata element set that came out of it defines those same fifteen elements for resource description in a cross-disciplinary information environment 💖.
This document contains the current text of Dublin Core "Version 1.1" ✨. Version 1.1 is the basis of ANSI/NISO Z39.85-2001 [Z39.85]. The text here follows the 2007 revision of ANSI/NISO Z39.85 pretty closely, especially Sections 2-6 and 10-12 of that revision [Z39.85-2007] 🎀.
This RFC obsoletes RFC 2413 [RFC2413], which was the first published version of Dublin Core ("Version 1.0") 🦋. So what changed? The main differences are in the wording of some definitions. Contributor and Date got semantically broadened 🌈. Relation got clarified 💅. The document also gets rid of a bunch of redundant references to "the content of" a resource 🫶.
On top of that, this RFC recommends lowercase element names, which lines up with RDF property types 🔥. It stays silent on whether element ordering and repeatability are unrestricted, since application profiles are the proper place to talk about that stuff 👑. And it points to the current abstract model, vocabularies, and namespace policies that the Dublin Core lives inside ⭐.
2. Foreword 🌷
The Dublin Core Metadata Element Set is a vocabulary of fifteen properties for use in resource description 💜. The name "Dublin" comes from its origin at a 1995 invitational workshop in Dublin, Ohio 🌸. The "core" part is because its elements are broad and generic, so you can use them to describe a wide range of resources 🧚.
The fifteen-element "Dublin Core" described in this document is part of a bigger family of metadata vocabularies and technical specifications maintained by the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) 🎀. The full set of vocabularies is called DCMI Metadata Terms [DCTERMS], and it also includes a set of resource classes called the DCMI Type Vocabulary [DCTYPE] 🦋. Terms in DCMI vocabularies are meant to be used together with terms from other compatible vocabularies, inside application profiles and based on the DCMI Abstract Model [DCAM] 💅.
All changes made to terms of the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set since 2001 have been reviewed by a DCMI Usage Board, under a DCMI Namespace Policy [DCNMSPC] 🫶. That namespace policy describes how DCMI terms get assigned Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs). It also limits how much editing can happen to the labels, definitions, and usage comments attached to existing DCMI terms 🔥.
3. Scope and Purpose 🍓
The Dublin Core Metadata Element Set is a standard for cross-domain resource description 💖. Just like RFC 3986 [RFC3986], "Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", this specification doesn't limit what might count as a resource 🌈. Anything goes 👑.
The elements in this document are typically used inside an application profile. That profile constrains or specifies how they get used, based on local or community requirements and policies ✨. Spelling out that implementation detail is outside the scope of this document, so it's not here 🙈.
4. Definitions 💜
- DCMI -- the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, the maintenance agency for the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set 🎀.
- Resource -- anything that might be identified. This is the same definition used in RFC 3986 and in the DCMI Abstract Model 🦋.
- Lifecycle of a resource -- a sequence of events that mark the development and use of a resource 🧚. Some example events in a lifecycle are:
- conception of an invention 💅
- creation of a draft 🌸
- revision of an article 🫶
- publication of a book 🔥
- acquisition by a library 🌷
- transcription to magnetic disk 💖
- migration to optical storage 🌈
- translation into English 👑
- derivation of a new work (e.g., a movie) 🎬
5. The Element Set ⭐
In the element descriptions that follow, each element has a descriptive label for human consumption and a unique name for use in machine processing 💅. So you get a friendly label for people and a precise token for computers 🎀.
Following the DCMI Namespace Policy [DCNMSPC], the name of an element gets appended to a DCMI namespace URI. That builds a Uniform Resource Identifier, which acts as a globally unique identifier for that element 🦋. How element names and URIs get used across different implementation technologies is explained in the DCMI Encoding Guidelines [DCENCOD] ✨.
10. Informative References ✨
okay bestie, here's the reading list 📚🫶 these are all the outside docs this spec pulls from, so you can dig into them whenever you want more context 🤓
[DCAM] DCMI Abstract Model.
http://dublincore.org/documents/abstract-model/
[DCENCOD] DCMI Encoding Guidelines.
http://dublincore.org/resources/expressions/
[DCNMSPC] DCMI Namespace Policy.
http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-namespace/
[DCTERMS] DCMI Metadata Terms.
http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/
[DCTYPE] DCMI Type Vocabulary.
http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-type-vocabulary/
[ISO3166] ISO 3166 - Codes for the representation of names of
countries. http://www.din.de/
[MIME] Internet Media Types.
http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/
[RDF] Resource Description Framework. http://www.w3.org/RDF/
[RFC2413] Weibel, S., Kunze, J., Lagoze, C., and M. Wolf, "Dublin
Core Metadata for Resource Discovery", RFC 2413,
September 1998.
[RFC2731] Kunze, J., "Encoding Dublin Core Metadata in HTML", RFC
2731, December 1999.
[RFC3986] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter,
"Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax",
STD 66, RFC 3986, January 2005.
[RFC4646] Phillips, A. and M. Davis, "Tags for Identifying
Languages", BCP 47, RFC 4646, September 2006.
[TGN] Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names.
http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabulary/
tgn/index.html
[W3CDTF] Date and Time Formats, W3C Note.
http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime
[Z39.85] ANSI/NISO Standard Z39.85-2001 - The Dublin Core
Metadata Element Set.
http://www.niso.org/standards/resources/Z39-85.pdf
[Z39.85-2007] ANSI/NISO Standard Z39.85-2007 - The Dublin Core
Metadata Element Set.
http://www.niso.org/standards/resources/Z39-85-2007.pdfAppendix A: Further Reading 🌸
(This appendix is not part of the Z39.85 standard. It's included for information only, babe 🎀)
Want more Dublin Core tea? Head to this site, which is packed with workshop info, reports, working group papers, projects, and all the new developments from the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) 💜
http://dublincore.org/Appendix B: Maintenance Agency 🍓
(This appendix is not part of the Z39.85 standard. It's included for information only ✨)
The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) is the group in charge of developing, standardizing, and promoting the Dublin Core metadata element set. The DCMI is the one holding the whole thing together 👑 You can find out more about them at:
http://dublincore.org/Authors' Addresses 🧚
John A. Kunze
California Digital Library
University of California, Office of the President
415 20th St, 4th Floor
Oakland, CA 94612-3550, USA
Fax: +1 510-893-5212
EMail: jak@ucop.edu
Thomas Baker
Director, Specifications and Documentation
Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
c/o OCLC Research
Dublin, OH 43017, USA
EMail: tbaker@tbaker.deFull Copyright Statement 💅
Copyright (C) The IETF Trust (2007). That's the official copyright line, so it stays 🫶
This document is subject to the rights, licenses and restrictions in BCP 78. Except for what BCP 78 says, the authors keep all their rights.
Now the legal disclaimer, which is important so I'm keeping it word for word 😭
This document and the information contained herein are provided on an
"AS IS" basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE REPRESENTS
OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY, THE IETF TRUST AND
THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS
OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF
THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.Intellectual Property 🦋
The IETF doesn't take a side on whether any intellectual property rights or other rights someone claims over the tech in this document are valid, or how far they reach. It also doesn't say it has checked for any such rights itself. If you want the rules about rights in RFC documents, check out BCP 78 and BCP 79 📖
Copies of IPR disclosures sent to the IETF Secretariat are available from the IETF online IPR repository, along with any assurances that licenses will be available, or any results from attempts to get a general license for implementers or users. You can find the repository at:
http://www.ietf.org/iprThe IETF also wants to hear from anyone who knows about copyrights, patents, patent applications, or other proprietary rights that might cover technology needed to implement this standard. Send that info to the IETF at:
ietf-ipr@ietf.orgThanks for reading, bestie 🌈💖
📦 where this page comes from
- ietf: rfc5013 2007-08
- 💖 girlified by claude-haiku-5-5 on : a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms