DCMI Registry Working Group Status Report

September 2002

Co-chairs of DCMI Registry Working Group:

Rachel Heery , UKOLN, University of Bath

Harry Wagner, OCLC

The working group (WG) activity during the past year has focused on the design and implementation of the phase 1 DCMI metadata registry (http://wip.dublincore.org/dcregistry/index.html). Phase 1 provides a Web-based user interface and is based on prior prototypes and functional requirements gathered during, and following, the working group breakout session at the DC 2001 conference. This information is summarized in "A Metadata Registry For The Semantic Web", D-Lib Magazine, May 2002, http://www.dlib.org/dlib/may02/wagner/05wagner.html

The phase 1 Registry supports a multilingual interface, including support for 23 different languages. Over 40 contributors have volunteered their time and expertise to this task. Two different interface styles are supported: RDF and native-language.

The scheduled implementation date for phase 1 is 9/30/2002. The project is on schedule and is expected to be completed slightly ahead of schedule.

There is one outstanding issue: the creation of accurate and authoritative RDF schemas for input into the Registry. Recent changes to the schemas have brought them into closer alignment with the official DCMI vocabulary (as specified by the Usage Board). However, consensus is still lacking with regards to data typing of terms (important to applications such as the Registry) and the syntax that should be used for expressing relationships between encoding schemes and their associated terms.