DESIRE Toolkit Components

2.2 ROADS Dublin Core Metadata Repository
'DC in a box'

Description

An extension to the ROADS software toolkit to allow the creation and storage of Dublin Core metadata. Dublin Core elements are mapped to ROADS IAFA attributes for storage to allow interoperability with other ROADS-based services and so that various ROADS scripts continue to work without modification. The cataloguer and end user see only the mapped views of the metadata represented as a DC element set. Included is a script to generate 'on-the-fly' Dublin Core in RDF representations of the stored records (wpp2qualdc.pl) and also scripts to inform the content providers of the metadata. The content providers are encouraged to create a relationship between their resource and the corresponding metadata record using the HTML 'link' tag to call the wpp2qualdc.pl script.

The Dublin Core Metadata Repository is intended for use as a substitute for the IAFA templates normally used in ROADS. This will not be suitable for all kinds of data, since the IAFA templates can support a much wider range of attributes than the Dublin Core elements, but the use of Dublin Core standards will allow a high degree of interoperability with other services which use Dublin Core, whether ROADS-based or not.