Improving Metadata Interoperability at the Schema Level

• CT has been developed to improve lexical and semantic interoperability at the schema metadata model level.
• CT is a set of Common Terms of element names of MODS for MARC, and DC & QDC.
• It has 12 Common Terms (properties), and 58 qualifiers (sub-properties) that specify and subdivide 12 Common Terms in detail.
• The Common Terms and qualifiers are selected to minimize the gap of different degree of generality or specificity of MARC, MODS, DC and QDC.
• The 12 Common Terms are contributor, date, description, format, identifier, language, publisher, relation, rights, subject, title, and typeGenre.
• 58 qualifiers of CT 1.1 are selected to preserve much information of the 1000 MARC tags and many subfields, and elements and attributes of MODS.
• To decide which information of properties (tags) we have to preserve in CT, some criteria are considered to select Common Terms and qualifiers in order to improve interoperability at the schema level.
  • First of all, the Common Terms (properties/tags) should maximize lexical and semantic interoperability minimizing the gap of different degrees of generality or specificity.
  • The Common Terms (properties/tags) should be used often (over 50% usage) and commonly in metadata description records and in search engines.
  • They should be generalized in order to be commonly used with facility like Dublin Core, but should provide detail and precision information like MARC.
  • CTScheme is defined as a controlled set of values that are specific to Common Terminology. It is a unique chacrateristic of CT used as an authority that designates and limits values to describe resources.
  • Lastly, common sense is used to decide Common Terms (properties) and qualifiers (sub-properties).

The developed 12 Common Terms and 58 qualifiers (The link shows more details than below)