The Dublin Core is a list of 15 bibliographic elements for representing metadata about a document: title, creator, publisher, etc. DC is used commonly on the internet, and support seems to be growing. You can learn more on the Dublin Core Page.
The Dublin Core is used to store most bibliographic information in ThML documents, and preparing a DC record is one part of editing a book in ThML. This document describes guidelines for the (sometimes special) use of the Dublin Core for ThML.
Dublin Core elements have an element name, such as DC.Publisher. They may also have a sub-element name, such as Address, so that the element name is written DC.Publisher.Address. They may also have a scheme, such as URL. These are represented in ThML as <DC.Publisher sub="Address" scheme="URL">mailto:Harry.Plantinga@wheaton.edu</DC.Publisher>. Each element can occur any number of times in a DC record.
Here is an example of a Dublin Core record from Luther's commentary on Galatians. A description of elements will follow.
| Element | Scheme | Content |
| DC.Title | Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians | |
| DC.Title.Alternative | In epistolam Sancti Pauli ad Galatas commentarius 1531. English. | |
| DC.Creator | Luther, Martin | |
| DC.Creator.Translator | Graebner, Theodore | |
| DC.Subject | LCSH | Bible N.T. Galatians. Commentaries. |
| DC.Subject | CCEL | Classic; Reference |
| DC.Subject | LCCN | BS2685.L8 |
| DC.Description | "The importance of this Commentary on Galatians for the history of Protestantism is very great. It presents like no other of Luther's writings the central thought of Christianity, the justification of the sinner for the sake of Christ's merits alone. We have permitted in the final revision of the manuscript many a passage to stand which seemed weak and ineffectual when compared with the trumpet tones of the Latin original. But the essence of Luther's lectures is there. May the reader accept with indulgence where in this translation we have gone too far in modernizing Luther's expression--making him 'talk American.'" | |
| DC.Publisher | Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library | |
| DC.Publisher.Address | URL | mailto:ccel@wheaton.edu |
| DC.Publisher | CCEL | CCEL |
| DC.Contributor.Transcriber | Laura J. Hoelter | |
| DC.Contributor.Markup | Wendy Huang | |
| DC.Date.Created | ISO8601 | 1999-01 |
| DC.Type | Text.Monograph | |
| DC.Format | IMT | text/xml |
| DC.Format | Theological Markup Language | |
| DC.Identifier | CCEL | ccel/luther/galatians/1.04.htm |
| DC.Identifier | URL | http://www.ccel.org/l/luther/galatians/About.htm |
| DC.Source.Etext | Project Wittenberg | |
| DC.Source.Etext | URL | http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/gal/web/gal-inx.html |
| DC.Source.Print | Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1962, c. 1949, 5th ed. | |
| DC.Language | ISO639-1 | en |
| DC.Rights | Public Domain |
The elements with scheme="CCEL" are CCEL-specific and not really a part of the ThML specification. They are used for CCEL-specific purposes. The identifier is the CCEL unique identifier for a book; names with scheme="CCEL" are personIDs from the CCEL database. The <DC.Subject scheme="CCEL> element contains keywords that control what CCEL pages the book is added to, whether it is mirrored, etc.
The DC.Title.Alternative element is used for the Uniform Title from a MARC record or library card catalog. The <DC.Subject scheme="LCHS"> should be given the subject entries in the MARC record if possible, so the book can be indexed by Library of Congress subjects.
The DC.Description element should contain a short description of the document, perhaps a paragraph or so. This description should preferrably be taken from the document itself, perhaps from the introduction or abstract.
The DC.Contributor element can be used to note the people who contributed to the electronic text as shown. (The DC.Creator element should be used instead for the author, translator, or other person primarily responsible for the content of the document.) For the CCEL we have been using some non-standard subelements, such as Transcriber, Scanner, Proofreader, and Markup.
The <DC.Format scheme="IMT"> element should contain text/xml for the ThML version.
The Etext subelement for the DC.Source element is not standard, but it can be used for documents that start out as etexts in another format elsewhere on the web. These elements will be used to generate a link back to the original source.
The DC.Source.Print element should contain all of the publication information needed to identify the print source of the text, including publisher, publisher location, title, date, and edition, formatted as a bibliographic entry.