A Flexible Classification Scheme for Metadata Resources

We introduce a flexible mechanism to classify metadata resources using their elements and attributes. The metadata resources are represented in XML and we assume that they have been created based on some resource schemas. The concept of a classification schema is proposed to construct a taxonomy with metadata resources classified into different categories using classification rules. To define these classification schemas, a classification language has been developed. Using this language, we are able to define different classification schemas and thus construct different taxonomies for the same metadata resource collection. In this paper, we will describe the important features of this classification language, illustrating it with different examples.