Contribute to the DSpace Development Fund
The newly established DSpace Development Fund supports the development of new features prioritized by DSpace Governance. For a list of planned features see the fund wiki page.
Adapting DSpace to Current Dublin Core Standards
Current Dublin Core Status
1998-2008
There were 15 dublin core elements in the dc: namespace. All of these elements were optional and repeatable. DSpace, OAI-PMH, ... were based on these elements.
contributor, coverage, creator, date, description, format, identifier, language, publisher, relation, rights, source, subject, title, type
Post 2008
The existing 15 elements were extended with range and domain and new elements were added. To ensure "backwards compatibility" with existing implementations, these new changes were located in a new namespace, dcterms:
So dc:creator can't be confused with dcterms:creator, a property that can now have a range and domain.
Goals for DSpace
Exposing DSpace metadata in the dcterms namespace
If other new standards or applications will require the use of the dcterms: namespace instead of the dc: namespace, DSpace won't be able to comply.
Implementing/Verify range for properties that require this
Range defines the vocabulary or syntax which must be followed by a property. For example, the coverage property has following range:
http://purl.org/dc/terms/LocationPeriodOrJurisdiction
Examples: Format has the range MediaTypeorExtent and it's recommended to use the MIME types there.
Implementing/Verify domain for properties that require this
If a dcterm property specifies a domain, it means that the property can only be applied to a specific type of item it describes.
Example: The new term BibliographicCitation has the domain Bibliographic resource. This means that by specifying the property BibliographicCitation, it automatically implies that the item you're applying it to is a bibliographic resource.
Possible Approaches
Adding a new schema dcterms that lives next to the standard dc schema
Pro
- Possibly easier to ensure backwards compatibility, as we're not touching the standard schema.
- ...
Con
- ...