Guidance for Domains and Organizations Developing Vocabularies for Use with Dublin Core:

Outline

Dublin Core Metadata Initiative

28 November 2001

Editor: Ann Apps <ann.apps@man.ac.uk>

Creator: Diane Hillmann

Status of this document:Completed (Outline)

Description: This document will provide guidance to domains, organisations and projects who need to create type vocbaularies.

Comments and feedback should be sent to the working group mailing list, <dc-type@jiscmail.ac.uk>, the archives for which may be browsed at <http://jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/dc-type/> (NOTE, you must be a member of the WG to post messages to the WG) or, alternatively, send your feedback to the Editor of this Working Draft.

1. Background

"NISO Z39.19: Standard for Structure and Organization of Information Retrieval Thesauri," by Jessica L. Milstead (From: Proceedings of the Taxonomic Authority Files Workshop, Washington, DC, June 22-23, 1998) <http://research.calacademy.org/taf/proceedings/milsteadtaf.html>.
Good basic discussion about standard thesauri, plus some links to available tools for creating and maintaining vocabularies.

2. Beginning steps

• a) Define a scope and purpose for your vocabulary
• b) Determine how many vocabularies you need
• c) Determine whether and how to use hierarchies

3. Longer-range planning issues

• a) Stability (site)
• b) Maintenance organization
• c) Creating definitions
• d) Accessibility to others (schemas, registry)
• e) Planning for change

Other issues

Other things which the document should cover:

• A list of standard type encoding schemes, and guidance on how to encode types using these lists suitable for non-cataloguers to understand
• The difference between dc:type and dc:format and what information to encode in each
• Best practice guidance on choosing a type from DCMI Type Vocabulary as well as a domain-specific subtype