Thursday, June 07, 2007

Dublin Core?

DigitalKoans has a post announcing that the Dublin Core standard has been renewed and updated. Interestingly, I heard another attendee at the SLA Annual Conference "report" that Dublin Core is dead. (Unfortunately, I don't remember exactly who said it.) Dead? I wonder what markets have moved away from Dublin Core? I'm seeing and hearing digitization programs talk about and use Dublin Core, so it is not "dead" for digitization programs. Perhaps it is for general Internet uses that something is beginning to replace this standard. If anyone can confirm this (or has heard something different about the status of Dublin Core for specific uses), please leave a comment here. Thanks!

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The death of DC is more opinion than fact. Some people love DC because of its simplicity, flexibility and lack of content standards. Others hate it for the same reasons. I use it, but I am well aware of its weaknesses.

Since many digitization projects in the library and cultural heritage communities use it, and the OAI-PMH is based on it, I don't think it is going anywhere anytime soon. What's interesting is that Dublin Core applications are like snowflakes - no two are exactly the same. It really is both a blessing (at the local level) and a curse (when you try to merge many local implementations of the DC).

The person who made the comment at the SLA conference may have read articles by Jeffrey Beall or others who are critical of the Dublin Core.

This article causes quite a stir in the metadata community. Many people were not happy:

Beall, J. Dublin Core: An Obituary. Library Hi Tech News. Vol. 21(8) Sep 2004

Here's a follow-up. It's worth the read:

Beall, J. The Death of Metadata. The Serials Librarian. Vol 51(2) 2006.

4:08 PM

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