A black cat in a dark room - talking about metadata

falando sobre metadados

Abstract

Metadata is, basically, data about data. In a chaotic environment like the Internet, data are not enough anymore: metadata is needed for the semantic description of resources. However, metadata per se is also insufficient. As it happens in other areas, standardization is a keystone to the large-scale metadata usage and implementation. Dublin Core (CD) and Resource Description Format (RDF) are two recommendations from two different initiatives: DCMI (Dublin Core Metadata Initiative) and W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). In order to be widely used, the DMCI opted for broadly defining the DC semantics, while leaving the syntax issues open and undefined. This is the reason why RDF and DC match so well: RDF brings the syntax rules on which DC can be embedded. In this paper we illustrate the use of DC, RDF and RDF Schema, showing some examples of their application. Next, we draw some conclusions on their applicability and talk about their future.