NISO MI TG2: Collection Description

1
NISO MI TG2 Identifiers for Metadata Terms in
DC CD AP NISO MI Meeting, Research Triangle
Park, NC, USA Wednesday 23 March 2005 Thursday
24 March 2005 Pete Johnston Research Officer,
UKOLN
UKOLN is supported by
www.bath.ac.uk
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Assigning URIs for metadata terms

• Must be globally unique
• Must be relatively persistent
• Should not be (re-)assigned to identify another
  resource
• Expected to last as long as the Internet
• Social/organisational, rather than technical,
  issue
• W3C, DCMI make public policy commitment to URI
  persistence
• Should be resolvable to machine-readable or
  human-readable representation
• using widely deployed technologies
• use of HTTP URIs by Semantic Web developers
• Should be easily usable in RDF/XML and DC-XML
• Need naming authority

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Maintaining metadata terms

• For use in DC metadata, must be defined in manner
  compatible with DCMI Abstract Model / RDF
• Terms as conceptual resources
• URI should continue to denote same essential
  concept over time
• But terms evolve with use
• Term definitions/descriptions require maintenance
• Amendment/correction
• Additional information
• Description of relationships with other terms
• Need (DC-aware) maintenance authority

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Terms v DCAPs

• N.B. Maintenance of terms is distinct from
  maintenance of DCAP
• DCAP may reference terms from multiple sources
• Terms maintained by multiple authorities (e.g.
  DCMI, LoC, .)
• Owner/maintainer of DCAP not necessarily
  owner/maintainer of terms referenced in DCAP

5
NISO MI TG2 Identifiers for Metadata Terms in
DC CD AP NISO MI Meeting, Research Triangle
Park, NC, USA Wednesday 23 March 2005 Thursday
24 March 2005 Pete Johnston Research Officer,
UKOLN
UKOLN is supported by
www.bath.ac.uk