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[FYI] Dublin Core Releases Recommended Qualifiers




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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