What is Dublin Core?
The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative is an open organization engaged in the development of interoperable online metadata standards that support a broad range of purposes and business models.The Dublin Core metadata element set is a standard for cross-domain information resource description. In other words, it provides a simple and standardised set of conventions for describing things online in ways that make them easier to find. Dublin Core is widely used to describe digital materials such as video, sound, image, text, and composite media like web pages.
DCMI does this by:
- Developing and maintaining international standards for describing resources
- Supporting a worldwide community of users and developers
- Promoting widespread use of Dublin Core solutions
The major characteristics of DCMI as an organization are (the three ‘I’s):
- Independent: DCMI is not controlled by specific commercial or other interests and is not biased towards specific domains nor does it mandate specific technical solutions
- International: DCMI encourages participation from organizations anywhere in the world, respecting linguistic and cultural differences
- Influenceable: DCMI is an open organization aiming at building consensus among the participating organizations; there are no prerequisites for participation
The development and maintenance of a core set of metadata terms (the DCMI Metadata Terms) continues to be one of the main activities of DCMI. In addition, DCMI is developing guidelines and procedures to help implementers define and describe their usage of Dublin Core metadata in the form of Application Profiles. This work is done in a work structure that provide discussion and cooperation platforms for specific communities (e.g. education, government information, corporate knowledge management) or specific interests (e.g. technical architecture, accessibility).
