Specifying metadata standards for metadata tool configuration

Abstract

A critical problem for metadata applications is flexibility. A metadata application must be sufficiently flexible to cope with changes to metadata standards over time and to allow users to extend a standard to cope with local requirements. A key component of supporting flexible metadata applications is software which can be dynamically configured by a specification of the metadata standard. By contrast, in current metadata software the metadata standard is embedded in the code, making changes relatively more difficult and expensive. Configurable software also leads to better tools at a lower cost, as it is not necessary to re-implement functionality for every new metadata standard. This paper describes a metadata specification designed to support dynamic configuration of metadata software by capturing features of metadata standards. The specification comprises three components: the classification of the metadata standard, the metadata schema, and the metadata expression. © 1998 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.