[Sigsti-l] metadata terminology question

[Cyndy Chandler]

Hi all,

I'm looking for some help defining some metadata terminology.  If you 
can think of a more appropriate list for this sort of posting, please 
respond with that sort of information as well.

This question (below and my response below that) was posted recently on 
another mailing list of which I'm a member (one that supports the Marine 
Metadata Initiative; http://www.marinemetadata.org/).  Do any of you 
have any suggestions for published definitions of these terms?  Feel 
free to share this question with anyone you think might help us out with 
this.

thanks in advance for answers and guidance,
cheers, cyndy


the original posting at MMI:

John Graybeal wrote:
 > Can anyone can point to a reasonably authoritative (e.g., published) 
answer to the question (3) below, or provide their own answer (and 
justification) that they are convinced is right. (Any arguments about my 
declarations (1) and (2) are not so eagerly welcomed, but probably 
necessary also. :->)
 >
 > (1) A content standard is a specification that describes how to 
document the content of a digital entity (data file, publication, whatever).
 >
 > (2) An instance or example of a content standard is FGDC CSDGM.
 >
 > (3) What is the document that follows the content standard (that is, 
that someone creates by following the content standard) called?
 >
 > I think people have called it an instance, but I claim that is wrong 
(see (2)). I have a few candidate terms in mind, but I wanted to know if 
there is a term of reference that any existing community uses.  (For an 
analogous example, what do the designers of user interface forms call 
the product that results when someone fills out the form?  In some 
contexts, I think it is called a 'record'.  Other opinions?)
 >
 > John


and my response to John's email posting ...
I'm checking in  library science literature for formal definitions of 
these terms ... I'm not having much luck so far.

in the meantime, here are my thoughts ...

your thinking on #1 and #2 seems reasonable to me.

http://www.dlib.org/dlib/february06/jerez/02jerez.html
implies that "the document that follows the content standard" is called 
a metadata instance, and I imagine one would refer to it as, a metadata 
instance that is FGDC CSDGM compliant.  the excerpt below is from that 
D-Lib paper -

" ... submit metadata instances about content objects that they author 
or acquire. The submission of a metadata instance constitutes the 
registration of the content object being described by the metadata. 
Multiple metadata instances may be submitted by multiple parties for the 
same uniquely identified content object. These metadata instances are 
expressed as LOM [6] (Learning Object Metadata) encoded as XML and are 
submitted manually or automatically to the registry, which relates them 
to other metadata instances for the same content object through the 
identifier for that content object."

not a definition, but an example of how its used.

so one could have:
content standards
instances of content standards (e.g. FGDC CSDGM)
and metadata instances that are or are not compliant with various standards

- cyndy


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Cyndy Chandler	        | voice: (508) 289-2765
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Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office
Department of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry
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