collection-description

Collection Description

Collection descriptions might describe anything that was a group of physical or digital things. My original viewpoint is from library and information science, but I believe the notion of a collection description could be used in other disciplines http://www.selfdescription.org - Tim Hodson

Background

A 3 month investigation into the possibilities and some background survey work was carried out, and results of which can be read in Self Description: Collection description remodeled as a microformat available as a pdf. Self-Description-Tim-Hodson-Msc.pdf

Existing metadata schema

Dublin Core are working on a collection description application profile which is nearing completion. DC CD AP

Naturally the DC CD AP specifies metadata that should be in a collection description, and the metadata sets are used by the IESR, SCONE, Archives Hub, (all with other local data) but noticeably, not your average library or museum.

A collection description re-modelled as a microformat would allow collections to be discoverable on any library website suitably marked-up, thus opening up an organisation's collections to a wider audience.

Examples

Collection descriptions in the wild.

• The British Library has extensive information on it's website to explain and describe it's collections.
• Leeds University Library, Printed books collections.
• Stanford University Library
• Further examples can be found in Appendix C of Self Description: Collection description remodeled as a microformat Self-Description-Tim-Hodson-Msc.pdf