[LINK] RFI: Dublin Core 10 Years On

[Jan Whitaker]

At 01:10 PM 18/01/2007, Linda Rouse wrote:
>>Are there convenient mechanisms to support authors to quickly 
>>generate metadata for their documents just before they release them?
><SNIP>
>Some of the better CMS and DAM systems have prefillers for metadata 
>and templates for on-the-fly metadata creation with say, a dropdown 
>to select a specific subject etc.

There were some early tools developed by DSTC back in the late 
90s/early 00s. I'll toot a horn for a project that I worked on 
(design, operational processes, and on-going maintenance) from 1998 
until January 2006, Agrigate, one of the longest running subject 
gateways until Melbourne Uni pulled the plug. We modeled the data 
structures on DC plus a few local fields for record management. 
Sadly, the link doesn't appear to be active at all any longer 
(www.agrigate.edu.au). I have no idea what happened to the >600 
records that were written for evaluated agriculture information from 
around the world as well as Australia. It's one of those that if 
people had sense should have been captured in one of the archives. 
But for some reason (personnel changes) I doubt it. It used to be 
linked into the ARROW project, but that and the University of 
Melbourne are nowhere to be found.

One of the things that was/is terrific about DC was the way it 
allowed repository exchange. If you have the same data structures in 
general, you have a fighting chance of distributed searching and 
record merging for information sources with value added descriptions. 
It was never perfect, but it was much better than trying to migrate 
between proprietary systems. Data life and application is more than 
creation for better return on the investment if that is going to be 
measured by use, for example.

Jan


Jan Whitaker
JLWhitaker Associates, Melbourne Victoria
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
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'Seed planting is often the most important step. Without the seed, 
there is no plant.' - JW, April 2005
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