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Glossary

Application profile

"A set of metadata elements, policies, and guidelines defined for a particular application. The elements may be from one or more element sets, thus allowing a given application to meet its functional requirements by using metadata from several element sets including locally defined sets. For example, a given application might choose a subset of the Dublin Core that meets its needs, or may include elements from the Dublin Core, another element set, and several locally defined elements, all combined in a single schema. An Application profile is not complete without documentation that defines the policies and best practices appropriate to the application". Dublin Core Metadata Glossary, Final Draft, Feb. 24, 2001, Online. Available at http://library.csun.edu/mwoodley/dublincoreglossary.html

Authority file

"Authority Files are lists of terms that are used to control the variant names for an entity or the domain value for a particular field. Examples include names for countries, individuals, and organizations. Non-preferred terms may be linked to the preferred versions...generally does not include a deep organization or complex structure. The presentation may be alphabetical or organized by a shallow classification scheme. There may be some limited hierarchy applied in order to allow for simple navigation, particularly when the authority file is being accessed manually or is extremely large..." "NKOS Taxonomy of Knowledge Organization Sources/Systems" Draft, July 31, 2000. Online. Available at http://nkos.slis.kent.edu/KOS_taxonomy.htm

Classification Systems

Classification systems are used to categorize concepts or objects. Classification systems can be based on various characteristics, such as function, social context, or form. For example, the classification system provided in the Revised Nomenclature for Museum Cataloguing is based on the original function of the object.

Crosswalk

"A table that maps the relationships and equivalencies between two or more metadata formats. Crosswalks or metadata mapping support the ability of search engines to search effectively across heterogeneous databases, i.e. crosswalks help promote interoperability". Dublin Core Metadata Glossary, Final Draft, Feb. 24, 2001, Online. Available at http://library.csun.edu/mwoodley/dublincoreglossary.html

Document Type Definition (DTD)

"In SGML or XML, a formal description of the components of a specific document or class of documents. DTDs provide a formal grammar used for machine processing (parsing) of documents expressed in SGML or XML. A DTD description includes:

The containers or elements that make up the document; e.g., paragraphs, headings, list items, figures, tables, etc.
The logical structure of the document; e.g., chapters containing sections, etc.
Additional information associated with elements (known as attributes); e.g., identifiers, date stamps, etc. "

Dublin Core Metadata Glossary, Final Draft, Feb. 24, 2001, Online. Available at

http://library.csun.edu/mwoodley/dublincoreglossary.html

Element

"A discrete unit of data or metadata. An element may contain subelements that are called qualifiers in Dublin Core." Dublin Core Metadata Glossary, Final Draft, Feb. 24, 2001, Online. Available at http://library.csun.edu/mwoodley/dublincoreglossary.html

Extensible Markup Language (XML)

"A subset of Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), a widely used international text processing standard. XML is being designed to bring the power and flexibility of generic SGML to the Web, while maintaining interoperability with full SGML and HTML". Dublin Core Metadata Glossary, Final Draft, Feb. 24, 2001, Online. Available at http://library.csun.edu/mwoodley/dublincoreglossary.html

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)

"The standard text-formatting language for documents on the World Wide Web. HTML text files contain content that is rendered on a computer screen and markup, or tags, that can be used to tell the computer how to format that content. HTML tags can also be used to encode metadata and to tell the computer how to respond to certain user actions, such as a mouse click". Dublin Core Metadata Glossary, Final Draft, Feb. 24, 2001, Online. Available at http://library.csun.edu/mwoodley/dublincoreglossary.html

Metadata registry

"A system to provide management of metadata elements. Metadata registries are formal systems that provide authoritative information about the semantics and structure of data elements. Each element will include the definition of the element, the qualifiers associated with it, mappings to multilingual versions and elements in other schema". Dublin Core Metadata Glossary, Final Draft, Feb. 24, 2001, Online. Available at http://library.csun.edu/mwoodley/dublincoreglossary.html

Namespace

"A unique name that identifies an organization that has developed an XML schema. A namespace is identified via a Uniform Resource Identifier (a URL or URN)...The use of namespaces allows the definition of an element to be unambiguously identified with a URI, even though the label "title" alone might occur in many metadata sets. In more general terms, one can think of any closed set of names as a namespace. Thus, a controlled vocabulary such as the Library of Congress Subject Headings, a set of metadata elements such as DC, or the set of all URLs in a given domain can be thought of as a namespace that is managed by the authority that is in charge of that particular set of terms". Dublin Core Metadata Glossary, Final Draft, Feb. 24, 2001, Online. Available at http://library.csun.edu/mwoodley/dublincoreglossary.html