User Guidelines for DC Metadata creation.
Short version

Version 1.0 1997-06-02
Last update : 1997-07-07
Dublin Core Dublin Core As part of the "Nordic Metadata Project", the following Short Guidelines for Dublin Core metadata creation are available. These guidelines and the metadata creation tool are for the content providers, supporting the user to create Dublin Core metadata at a basic level. Furthermore, the "Nordic Web Index" will index the pages when published and soon offer improved searching possibilities and precision to all users on the Internet.

DC Metadata Template User Guidelines (Extended) General Help

1. INTRODUCTION

Objective and goal :
This user guide will provide a short description on issues involved in and related to the Dublin Core Metadata creation on a syntax-independent level.

  • An introduction on how to use our metadata creation tool
  • A description of the Nordic Metadata Template and Tool
  • Guidelines for a short Dublin Core metadata record creation
The User Guide is provided as part of the "Nordic Metadata Project". The guidelines are based on the Dublin Core 15 Element Set as proposed in December, 1996 by the Dublin Core Metadata community, and on the agreements on the usage of DC elements including the use of Qualifiers made in the DC4 meeting in Canberra, Australia.

2. NORDIC METADATA TEMPLATE AND TOOL

The purpose with this document is to offer end-users an introduction on how to create descriptive metadata records for information resources (i.e. electronic documents), and in particular to give step-by-step guidelines when using the Nordic Metadata creation tool developed within the Nordic Metadata Project. With our tool, you can choose between HTML 4.0 syntax inclusion or HTML 2.0/3.2 syntax inclusion.

BASIC STEPS :

  1. First, read this document to get an overview of what the Nordic Metadata Project offer and provide in terms of tools, documentation and service.

  2. Read the documentation provided by the project:

  3. Describe your WWW page using the Dublin Core Metadata Template,
    We also provide a Short DC metadata template for simple DC metadata enhancement.

  4. Fill in all necessary fields that will describe your WWW document. You can either fill in free-text (as in the Title element), or make a selection from an enumerated list (as in the Type and Language element)

  5. If you want to repeat a fields, you just press the "+" button for that element.
    If you want to exclude one or more elements, you press the "-" button.

  6. It is suggested that you fill in as many fields as possible.

  7. Together with all 15 elements in the template there are separate help-pages provided with each element (see help-page for the Title element). These help-pages are presented in separate windows and can therefore be used during the process of metadata description.

  8. When creating DC metadata for inclusion in your html-documents, you can choose between the HTML 4.0 syntax or the HTML 2.0/3.2 syntax.

  9. Use your text editor and paste the returned Dublin Core metadata record into your HTML page between the <HEAD> < /HEAD> elements.
    If you are uncertain of what to do that, please look at
    the View | Document Source... in your WWW browser, and look at the <HEAD> < /HEAD> area of this page.

  10. Finally, don't forget to fill in the Evaluation form.
    This will help us to make this tool better for you!

    3. SHORT AND SIMPLE DC EXAMPLE.

    In this section, we will describe a short example of how to provide Dublin Core metadata on a syntax-independent level, as follows :

    • create a DC metadata record using the Short DC Metadata Template provided by the Nordic Metadata Project
    • provide a step-by-step explanation of the DC elements
    • how to insert the metadata record into your document.

    To create a full DC metadata record for your document, you can use the DC Metadata Template. To demonstrate how to provide a short metadata record, we will use a step-by-step approach on the following example below (the metadata record for this user guide document). The example below is according to the HTML 2.0/3.2 Standard since this is default in our metadata creation tool.

    <HTML> <HEAD> ...[document TITLE here]... <META NAME="DC.Date" CONTENT="(SCHEME=ISO8601) 1998-01-16"> <META NAME="DC.Title" CONTENT="User Guidelines for Dublin Core creation (Nordic Metadata Project)"> <META NAME="DC.Creator" CONTENT="Hansen, Preben"> <META NAME="DC.Creator.Address" CONTENT="preben@sics.se"> <META NAME="DC.Subject.keyword" CONTENT="Dublin Core, Metadata, User Guidelines"> <META NAME="DC.Type" CONTENT="User Guide, Tutorial"> <META NAME="DC.Identifier" CONTENT="(SCHEME="URL") http://www.sics.se/~preben/DC/DC_guide.html"> <META NAME="DC.Language" CONTENT="(SCHEME=ISO.639-1) sv"> </HEAD> <BODY> ...[document body begins]... </HTML> Step 1. The first thing you have to do is to decide the resource (document or object) that you want to provide with DC metadata.
    Step 2. Go to the Short DC Metadata template.
    Step 3. Start using the template by filling in the DC elements as follows :

      Element : Title
      Definition : The name given to the resource by the CREATOR or PUBLISHER .

      From our example : DC Metadata User Guidelines

      Element : Author or Creator
      Definition : The person(s) or organization(s) primarily responsible for the intellectual content of the resource. For example, authors in the case of written documents, artists, photographers, or illustrators in the case of visual resources. For personal names we prefer the "Last name, First name" praxis.

      From our example : Hansen, Preben

      Element : Subject or Keyword
      Definition : The topic of the resource. Usually, the subject will be expressed as keywords or phrases that describe the subject or content of the resource. The use of controlled vocabularies (such as MEdical Subject Headings) and classification schemas (for example, Library of Congress Classification numbers or Dewey Decimal numbers) are encouraged.
      The keywords (words or phrases) are separated by comma.

      From our example : Dublin Core, Metadata, User Guidelines

      Element : Date
      Definition : Date associated with the creation or availability of the resource. It could be a single data and a range of date.
      This element is automatically generated by our DC metadata tool and based on the HTTP server supplied date.

      From our examples :
      (SCHEME=ISO8601) 1998-01-16

      Element : Resource Type
      Definition : The category of the resource, such as home page, novel, poem, working paper, technical report, essay, dictionary. It is expected that RESOURCE TYPE will be chosen from an enumerated list of types.

      From our example : User Guide, Tutorial

      Element : Resource Identifier
      Definition : String or number used to uniquely identify the resource. Examples for networked resources include URLs and URNs (when implemented). Other globally-unique identifiers, such as International Standard Book Numbers (ISBN) or other formal names would also be candidates for this element.
      The default is the URL to the resource :

      From our example : http://www.sics.se/~preben/DC/DC_guide.html

      Element : Language
      Definition : Language(s) of the intellectual content of the resource.

      This element is automatically generated by our DC metadata tool.

      From our example : (SCHEME=ISO.639-1) sv"

    Step 4. Finally, when you have created a DC metadata record with the Nordic Metadata Tool, we need to insert the short DC metadata record into your own HTML document. To do this you just copy the record from the page created by our template, and paste it into your document between the HEAD tags, as illustrated below.

    <HTML> <HEAD> [document TITLE here]... The DC Metadata Record is placed here. </HEAD> <BODY> [document BODY here]... </HTML> You now have a metadata (Dublin Core) enhanced HTML document.

    For comments, please contact : Preben Hansen (preben@sics.se)

    Created: 1997-06-02
    Last update: 1998-02-07

    URL: http://www.sics.se/~preben/DC/DC_guide_short.html