Forwarded from the MARC list, FYI.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2001 10:00:54 -0400
From: Marilyn Geller <marilyn.geller@MINDSPRING.COM>
To: MARC <MARC@loc.gov>
Subject: Dublin Core Metatdata Element Set Approved

Bethesda, Md., USA - (October 5, 2001) NISO, the National Information
Standards Organization and the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI)
announce the approval by ANSI of the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set
(Z39.85-2001).  DCMI began in 1995 with an invitational workshop in Dublin,
Ohio that brought together librarians, digital library researchers, content
providers, and text-markup experts to improve discovery standards for
information resources.  The original Dublin Core emerged as a small set of
descriptors that quickly drew global interest from a wide variety of
information providers in the arts, sciences, education, business, and
government sectors.

Metadata is structured information that describes, explains, locates, or
otherwise makes it easier to retrieve, use or manage an information
resource.  The Dublin Core was originally developed to be simple and
concise, and to describe Web-based documents.  The current standard defines
fifteen metadata elements for resource description in a cross-disciplinary
information environment.  These elements are: title, subject, description,
source, language, relation, coverage, creator, publisher, contributor,
rights, date, type, format, and identifier.

Commenting on the approval, Stuart Weibel, Executive Director of DCMI, said:
"The approval of Z39.85 formalizes a long period of consensus building
representing the efforts of hundreds of people, and all participants can
take pride in what this community has built."  The NISO committee was
chaired by John Kunze (University of California/National Library of
Medicine) and included Rebecca Guenther (Library of Congress), Marjorie
Hlava (Access Innovations, Inc.), Clifford Morgan (John Wiley &Sons Ltd.)
and John Perkins (CIMI Consortium).

The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (http://dublincore.org) is an
organization dedicated to promoting the widespread adoption of interoperable
metadata standards and developing specialized metadata vocabularies for
describing resources that enable more intelligent information discovery
systems.  DCMI will act as the maintenance agency for the Dublin Core
Metadata Element set standard.

This standard is available for free downloading or hardcopy purchase at:
http://www.techstreet.com/

About NISO:
NISO is the only U.S. group accredited by the American National Standards
Institute to develop and promote technical standards for use in information
delivery services providing voluntary standards for libraries, publishers
and related information technology organizations.  All NISO standards are
developed by consensus under the guidance of experts and practitioners in
the field to meet the needs of both the information user and the producer.
For information about NISO's current standardization interests and
membership possibilities, please visit the NISO website at
http://www.niso.org.

For additional information contact NISO Headquarters at (301) 654-2512.
Email: nisohq@niso.org