Usage Guides for Collection Description

The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) Collection Description Community is gathering information about usage guidelines for, and examples of, collection description. A webpage that assembles the information already contributed is at:

http://epub.mimas.ac.uk/DC/dc-collections/usage-guides.html

Further contributions are welcome. Please send them to me (ann.apps@manchester.ac.uk) or to the DCMI Collection Description Community email listserv (dc-collections@jiscmail.ac.uk) (you need to be subscribed to the listserv to post to it). Following is the original request sent to the DCMI Collection Description Community for information about usage guidelines.

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Please would anyone who has a collection-based project / service / application, and who is willing to share details of their usage guidelines, or examples of collection description, send them to this group (or to me). I will create a web page of links to produce an accumulated set of knowledge and expertise in this area.

We learnt at the DC2007 conference that a Dublin Core (DC) Application Profile (actually a DC Abstract Model-conformant Application Profile) is now a package, known as the Singapore Framework, which comprises:

• Functional requirements (recommended)


• Domain model (mandatory)


• Description Set Profile (DSP) (mandatory)


• Usage Guidelines (optional)


• Encoding syntax guidelines (optional)

It has been suggested that we should create usage guidelines for collection description. It seems to me that it would be a significant job. And maybe there would need to be guidelines on different levels, eg some for library collections with strict cataloguing rules, and different guidelines for collections in other domains.

A first step would be to assess existing usage guidelines from applications, projects, services that are collection-based. Hence my request at the start of this message.

Thanks in advance for any contributions