Descriptive metadata for the Internet is a necessary requirement for users to navigate their way around different sites. Metadata facilitates the tracking of resources, plus their identification and archiving.
Metadata is a term applied to ‘descriptions about data’, or ‘data about data’. For example, an observation of a number of cars driving along a road is an item of ‘data’. Such data can be contextualized by the time that the observations were made, where the time relating to the number of observed cars is the ‘metadata’.
For this process of data sorting to work, programmers need to be adopting a common and universal metadata language. This is based on an existing ISO standard, which sets out the basis for the language, and this standard has undergone a 2020 update.
The basis of the common language is the Dublin Core. This is an initiative designed to create a digital library card catalog for the Web. The schema establishes standards for describing information, which then enables users from different countries to readily access data. The Dublin Core was first formulated in 1995 and it is maintained by the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI).
As an example, Dublin Core provides interoperability for metadata vocabularies, such as those in the linked data cloud and Semantic Web implementations.
The standard that has been updated is ISO 15836-2, titled “Information and documentation – The Dublin Core metadata element set – Part 2: DCMI Properties and classes”. This global standard extends the original set of 15 core properties with an updated 40 properties and 20 classes. The reason for this update is to improve the precision of descriptions in the Dublin Core.
The revision of the standard also ensures that definitions of terms are current. There has also been an expansion of the scope to capture all properties and classes relating to DCMI Metadata Terms.
Commenting on the update, Juha Hakala, who chaired the ISO group that developed the standard, indicates that the update provides a process for users and programmers to develop “resource descriptions that interoperate on a general level across multiple domains and languages.”