Dublin Core Usage Board Review of Collections Application Profile
The Application Profile
The Collections Description Working Group has been working on an application profile for some years, their efforts culminating in a number of drafts submitted to the DC Usage Board for review. The UB considered informally a first draft of the Application Profile at its meeting in Madrid in September 2005. Subsequently, the UB carried out a formal review of the Application Profile at Manzanillo in 2006 and on a revised Application Profile at Barcelona in 2007.
Most of the work developing the Application Profile was done by Pete Johnston, chair of the Collections Description Working Group. The CDWG was characterised by an interested and involved community who provided lengthy and valuable comments on various drafts of the Application Profile, showing a high-level of buy-in to the Application Profile by the community. After Pete stood down as chair of the Group at DC2006, work on the Application profile was taken over by Sarah Shreeves and Muriel Foulonneau. Sarah and Muriel submitted a revised version of the Collections Application Profile to the Usage Board in March 2007 and the Profile was reviewed by the Usage Board at its March 2007 meeting.
The Application Profile was developed in order to provide a specific method for describing both collections of resources, and catalogues of collections of resources (in essence a specialised form of ‘collection’) that conforms to the Dublin Core Abstract Model. The Application Profile defines collection as “any aggregation of physical and/or digital resources”. Examples of collections include aggregations of natural (ie. physical) objects, created objects, ‘born-digital’ items, digital surrogates of physical items. Note that the Application Profile is not intended to descriptions of every possible characteristic of resource collections, as it s primary purpose is discovery.
The simple descriptions provided for in the Application Profile are suitable for a broad range of types of collections. Descriptions under this Application Profile are primarily designed to support:
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discovery of collections;
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identification of collections;
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selection of collections;
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identification of collection locations;
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identification of services providing access to collections.
The Application Profile explains how to use a subset of the existing DC Terms for the specific purpose of describing collections of resources, and also defines a number of additional terms that can be used to enhance descriptions of collections for discovery purposes. Along with additional elements the Application Profile also defines a number of encoding schemes that are to be used as the source of values for some of the new elements.
Review Process
The Application Profile was informally reviewed by the Usage Board in 2005 and discussed at the Usage Board meeting in Madrid in September 2005. Following that informal review a number of suggestions were made to Pete Johnston regarding changes to the draft profile. The Application Profile was then formally submitted to the Usage Board for review in mid-2006. The Usage Board carried out a formal review of the Application Profile during the lead-up to the DC Conference in Manzanillo and finalised its review at the Usage Board meeting in Manzanillo in September 2006. A small number of minor amendments were identified and these were communicated to the Working Group following the Manzanillo meeting. A final version was submitted to the Usage Board for review at the Usage Board’s meeting in Barcelona in March 2005. Although a number of minor issues (detailed below) were identified, the Application Profile was approved as a conforming Application Profile by the Usage Board.
The Usage Board reviews Application Profiles to determine whether they are conforming or not. In this context conforming means: • the profile's usage of terms conforms to the DCMI Abstract Model; • the profile, taken as a whole, is internally consistent; and • the profile is sufficiently documented to serve the needs of the community of interest.
At its Barcelona meeting, the Usage Board determined that the Collections Application Profile was conforming. Some minor issues were identified by the Usage Board but these did not present a barrier to assigning conforming status to the Profile. The issues identified during the final review of the Profile were:
[to be added by Barcelona meeting attendees]