Title:        DCMI Usage Board Review of Collections Application Profile
Date:         2007-07-20
Description:  This document is the result of a March 2007 review by the 
              DCMI Usage Board of the "Dublin Core Collections
              Application Profile".

About the profile

The Collections Application Profile [1] was developed in
order to provide a method for describing "collections" --
both collections of resources, and catalogues of collections of
resources (in essence a specialised form of "collection") --
which conforms to the DCMI Abstract Model [2]. The Collections
Application Profile defines collection as "any aggregation of
physical and/or digital resources". Examples of collections
include aggregations of natural (i.e. physical) objects,
created objects, "born-digital" items, and digital surrogates
of physical items. The Collections Application Profile is
not intended to describe every possible characteristic of
resource collections, as its primary purpose is discovery.

The simple descriptions provided for in the Collections
Application Profile are suitable for describing many different
types of collections. Descriptions using this Application
Profile are primarily designed to support:

 * discovery of collections;
 * identification of collections;
 * selection of collections;
 * identification of collection locations;
 * identification of services providing access to collections.

The domain model used in the Collections Application
Profile is based on "An analytical model of collections and
their catalogues" by Michael Heaney [9].   This analytical
model focuses on Collections.  Collections hold Items, are
described by Catalogues or Indexes, are located in Locations
and accessed via Services, and are owned or collected by
Owners who provide Services.

Descriptions of Collections specify the nature of a collection,
its name, size, language, topic, intended audience, and scope,
as well as the methods and policies by which items are added
to the collection.  In addition, descriptions indicate the
Collector and Owner of the collection, point to the location
where the collection is held and services which provide access,
and note any related collections, catalogues, or publications.

In order to do this, the Collections Application Profile uses
DCMI terms along with more specialized terms created for use
in the profile [3].  Controlled vocabularies of values were
created for use in this profile: the Dublin Core Collection
Description Type Vocabulary [4], an Accrual Method Vocabulary
[5], an Accrual Policy Vocabulary [6], and a Frequency
Vocabulary [7].  A summary of terms and constraints used in
the profile was compiled into a tabular list [8].

Building on prior work of the UKOLN Collection Description
Focus [11] on the Resource Support Libraries Programme [12]
(see also [13]), the DCMI Collection Description Working
Group began in 2002 [10].  The initial development of the
Collections Application Profile was led by Pete Johnston,
chair of the Collections Description Working Group [15]. This
working group was characterized by an interested and involved
community which 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.

The DCMI Usage Board undertook an informal review of the
draft profile in September 2005.  The Application Profile was
then formally submitted to the Usage Board for a review in
mid-2006, resulting in further feedback to the Working Group.
When Pete stood down as chair of the Group in 2006, work
on the Application profile was taken over by Sarah Shreeves
and Muriel Foulonneau. Sarah Shreeves and Muriel Foulonneau
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. Although
some minor issues were flagged (see below), the Usage Board
approved the profile as a conforming Application Profile.

Review criteria and result

The Usage Board determined that the Collections Application
Profile "conforms", which in this context was taken to mean:

-- the profile's usage of terms conforms to the DCMI Abstract
   Model;

-- profile, taken as a whole, is internally consistent; and

-- the profile is sufficiently documented to serve the needs
   of the community of interest.

Other comments (not related to conformance per se)

-- The Usage Board has long recognized that, in practice, the
   dc:identifier property is used both for identification and
   for location.  The property cld:isLocatedAt, a sub-property
   of dc:relation, refers to physical locations. Some reviewers
   felt that expressing digital locations with dc:identifier
   and physical locations with a separate property could prove
   to be problematic, especially for mixed physical and digital
   collections.

-- Some reviewers questioned whether it is helpful to define
   cld:isLocatedAt as a subproperty of dc:relation (hence subject
   to being resolved to dc:relation during dumb down).

-- In the Purpose and Scope section, the text states: "Those
   resources may be of any type, so examples might include
   [...] catalogues of such collections (as aggregations
   of metadata records)."  This sentence implies a generally
   understood library-world meaning of "record".  Some reviewers
   saw a potential for confusion with the different, more specific
   concept of "record" defined in the DCMI Abstract Model.

References

 [1] http://dublincore.org/groups/collections/collection-application-profile/2007-03-09/
 [2] http://dublincore.org/documents/2007/04/02/abstract-model/
 [3] http://dublincore.org/groups/collections/collection-terms/2007-03-09/
 [4] http://dublincore.org/groups/collections/colldesc-type/2007-03-09/
 [5] http://dublincore.org/groups/collections/accrual-method/2007-03-09/
 [6] http://dublincore.org/groups/collections/accrual-policy/2007-03-09/
 [7] http://dublincore.org/groups/collections/frequency/2007-03-09/
 [8] http://dublincore.org/groups/collections/collection-ap-summary/2007-03-09/
 [9] http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/rslp/model/
[10] http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0202&L=dc-collections&P=60
[11] http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/cd-focus/
[12] http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/rslp/
[13] http://dlib.ukoln.ac.uk/dlib/september00/powell/09powell.html
[14] http://dublincore.org/usage/meetings/2007/03/barcelona/Topic-cdap.txt
[15] http://dublincore.org/groups/collections/