From: Roddy Young (press@zotgroup.com)
Date: Tue Jul 11 2000 - 06:00:39 PDT
For Immediate Release
Contacts:
Sally Khudairi
Roderic Olvera Young
ZOT Group
+1.617.542.5335
dcmi@zotgroup.com
DUBLIN CORE RELEASES RECOMMENDED QUALIFIERS
Building the De Facto Metadata Standard and Improving Access to the World's
Information
http://purl.org/dc/ - 11 July 2000 - The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
(DCMI), an organization leading the development of international standards
to improve electronic resource management and information discovery, today
announced the formal recommendation of the Dublin Core (DC) Qualifiers. The
addition of the DC Qualifiers enhances the semantic precision of the
existing DC Metadata Element Set.
"Think of Legos. The close tolerances of these simple toys ensure all the
different Lego themes, built at different times, can work together
smoothly. Dublin Core is the basic Lego block for promoting discovery of
resources on the Web: a simple and interoperable foundation upon which many
information solutions can be built. The introduction of Dublin Core
Qualifiers is like adding color and themes to the Legos - it helps enrich
the description of information resources on the Internet" said Stuart
Weibel, DCMI Director.
The DC Qualifiers build upon the DC Metadata Element Set, which provides 15
categories to describe resources on the Web - a catalog card with new
dimensions. Known as the Dublin Core, the metadata model has become the de
facto standard for description of information on the Internet.
For the past year, working groups of the Dublin Core developed these newly
agreed upon refinements to the catalog card to give better access to
information we seek. In essence, the new recommendations for Dublin Core
Qualifiers increase the effectiveness of metadata by giving it finer
granularity. For example, a publication's date, which would be the Dublin
Core Metadata Element, may be further detailed as a particular type of date
by using a Dublin Core Qualifier such as date last modified, date created,
or date issued.
Dublin Core's Usage Committee today launches the next step toward a
cohesive metadata standard. The DC Qualifiers improve interpretation of
metadata values and can be easily recorded or transferred into HTML, XML,
RDF or relational databases. The evolution of DC Qualifiers draws from the
input of many individuals across a broad array of disciplines.
Users include museum informatics specialists, archivists, digital library
researchers, libraries, and government information providers and a variety
of content providers. Their efforts have led standards organizations, such
as NISO (National Information Standards Organization) in the U.S. and CEN
in Europe (European Committee for Standardization) to view the DC Metadata
Element Set as a benchmark candidate for simple resource description on the
Internet. More recently, new sectors, such as education and industry, have
been attracted to Dublin Core's simplicity, multilingual scope, consensus
philosophy and widespread adoption.
More information about the new recommendation can be found at:
http://purl.org/dc/documents/dcmes-qualifiers
The metadata for this press release can viewed at:
http://purl.org/dc/pressreleases/qualifiers20000711.htm.rdf
Praise for DC Qualifiers from Key Leaders in Metadata:
"The ratification of Dublin Core Qualifiers is an important milestone that
will improve the usefulness of Dublin Core metadata for libraries and the
greater Internet community. OCLC is pleased to host the Dublin Core
Metadata Initiative as part of its continuing commitment to global open
standards which facilitate international knowledge access. We expect the
Dublin Core to play an important role in bridging traditional library
cataloging and Internet resource description."
-- Jay Jordan, CEO, OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc.
"I'm delighted to see this important next step on the Dublin Core Metadata
Initiative's program, which begins to map the path between the
lowest-common-denominator unqualified elements and the need for greater
precision in many actual applications. This is a relatively short document,
but it distills an enormous amount of thinking, discussion and hard work by
a worldwide community concerned with metadata, and the consensus it
captures represents a substantial accomplishment."
-- Clifford Lynch, Executive Director, Coalition for Networked Information.
"The Dublin Core qualifiers establish an important precedent for the
"best-practice" use of the Dublin Core Element Set. The W3C work on the
Resource Description Framework (RDF) anticipated from its very beginning
the need within the Dublin Core framework to use qualifiers to represent
encoding schemes as well as vocabulary refinement. The adoption of this set
of qualifiers leads the way for more widespread use of the Dublin Core to
describe materials on the Web in greater detail."
-- Ralph R. Swick, Technical Director, Technology and Society Domain, World
Wide Web Consortium.
"Most Dublin Core implementation projects have always used element
qualifiers. To current and future Dublin Core users, agreement on core
Qualifiers is a hallmark event which can only be compared with completion
of the 15 basic Dublin Core Metadata Elements. Now, with both Elements and
their Qualifiers in place, Dublin Core is a much more powerful and
versatile tool."
-- Juha Hakala, Development Director, Helsinki University Library.
"Implementers of Internet search engines are certain to welcome the most
recent development of the Dublin Core standard. In Australia, Dublin Core
is being used to support access to information resources by governments,
the museum and library communities, and a number of projects within
academia. The approval of standard qualifiers will be welcomed by these
communities and ensure improved interoperability in the discovery of
Internet resources."
-- Dr. Warwick Cathro, Assistant Director-General of the National Library
of Australia.
"Melbourne IT's clients register domain names to move their businesses and
other activities online. Their goal of realizing the potential of the Web
can be fulfilled by Dublin Core. It delivers relevance to the information
end-users seek. Today, we are well placed to implement the new Dublin Core
standards in our own developments and to advise our clients as to how they
can benefit from using them."
-- Peter Gerrand, CEO of Melbourne IT.
"With the general adoption and the publication of the Dublin Core
Qualifiers, Dublin Core establishes itself as a reliable international
metadata standard. I am pleased that this consolidation process, with its
great importance for libraries, museums, archives and many other
communities, was set in motion during the 7th Dublin Core Workshop in
Frankfurt."
-- Dr. Elisabeth Niggeman, Director, Die Deutsche Bibliothek.
ABOUT THE DUBLIN CORE METADATA INITIATIVE [DCMI]
The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative is an open forum engaged since 1995 in
the development of interoperable online metadata standards that support a
broad range of purposes and business models. Its primary offering, the
Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, is the de-facto worldwide standard for
the description of information resources across disciplines and languages.
DCMI's activities include consensus-driven working groups, global
workshops, conferences, standards liaison, and educational efforts to
promote widespread acceptance of metadata standards and practices.
Representatives from industries worldwide are active contributors to the
DCMI; participation is open to practitioners and theoreticians from the
public, private and not-for-profit sectors. Further information on DCMI,
the Dublin Core family of specifications and various online metadata
solutions can be found at http://purl.org/dc/
The 8th Dublin Core Metadata Initiative Workshop, hosted by the National
Library of Canada and the International Federation of Library Associations
and sponsored by OCLC, the Coalition for Networked Information, and the
National Science Foundation, will be held the 4th through the 6th of
October and will help shape the future of metadata, implementation and
evolution of the standard. To register, please visit
http://www.ifla.org/udt/dc8/call.htm
Dublin Core Metadata for this Press Release, represented in RDF:
<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
<rdf:Description
rdf:about="http://purl.org/DC/pressreleases/qualifiers20000711.htm">
<dc:title>Dublin Core Metadata Initiative - Press Release: Dublin Core
Releases Recommended Qualifiers</dc:title>
<dc:description>The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, an organization
leading
the development of international standards to improve electronic resource
management and information discovery, today announced the formal
recommendation of the Dublin Core Qualifiers.</dc:description>
<dc:creator>Stuart Weibel</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Eric Miller</dc:creator>
<dc:contributor>Jay Jordan</dc:contributor>
<dc:contributor>Clifford Lynch</dc:contributor>
<dc:contributor>Ralph R. Swick</dc:contributor>
<dc:contributor>Juha Hakala</dc:contributor>
<dc:contributor>Dr. Warwick Cathro</dc:contributor>
<dc:contributor>Peter Gerrand</dc:contributor>
<dc:contributor>Dr. Elisabeth Niggemann</dc:contributor>
<dc:contributor>ZOT Group</dc:contributor>
<dc:publisher>Dublin Core Metadata Initiative</dc:publisher>
<dc:date>2000-07-11</dc:date>
<dc:format>text/html</dc:format>
<dc:language>en</dc:language>
<dc:type>press release</dc:type>
</rdf:Description>
</rdf:RDF>
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