DCMI-Tools: Ontologies for Digital Application Description

The growth in electronic and digital publishing on the World Wide Web has led to the development of a wide range of tools for generating metadata. As a result, it can be difficult to select the appropriate type of application and the best metadata tool to support a project’s metadata needs. The Dublin Core Tools (DCMI Tools) Community recognizes this need and is developing an application profile and a taxonomy of tool functionalities for describing metadata applications. The community will use the application profile and the taxonomy to standardize access to information on metadata via the DCMI Tools and Software program. This paper reports on the DCMI Tool Community’s activities to develop an application profile for describing the wide range of applications (algorithms; metadata templates, editors, and generators; and other software) fitting this rubric. The paper begins with an introduction to metadata application challenges, and introduces the DCMI Tools Community in order to provide important historical context. Next, the paper reviews the concept of application profile and emphasizes the importance of this approach for describing metadata tools. The paper reviews procedures to develop the application profile and presents the DCMI Tools application profile. The paper also presents a metadata tool functionality taxonomy (to be used with the application profile), a glossary (to assist people in learning about metadata tools), and the DCMI Tool Community’s implementation plans. The final part of the paper presents several conclusions and highlights next steps.