Leigh Anne Wilson

LIS 882
Fall 2015

Metadata Schema Report

Introduction
The first question that needs to asked, then answered, is What is a metadata schema? To
break it down, metadata is structured information that describes a resource, like a book or a
DVD. A schema delineates the way it is described. Metadata schemas are sets of elements
broken up into two parts the semantics, or meaning of the elements, and the values, which
make up the content. (NISO 2011) There are different metadata schemas out there that are tailormade for different organizations and different resources. This metadata schema report will cover
two of them, the Public Broadcasting Metadata Dictionary (PBCore) and the Categories for the
Description of Works of Art (CDWA).

Public Broadcasting Metadata Dictionary (PBCore)

Description and History of Schema
Local stations of public broadcasting channels did not and do not have the sheltering umbrella
of a major network to impose a set of standards for structuring their shared resources and assets,
so they had to collaborate to get the job done. The project was administered by a major PBS
station, WGBH in Boston, and worked on by people in public broadcasting in television, radio,
and online. The group had advisors from the University of Washington Information School, the
Department of Defenses Academic CoLab, and the Rutgers University/Association of Moving
Image Archivists, as well as various public broadcasting stakeholders. (Adamich 2011)
PBCore began in 2001, funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (and viewers like
you!) The public broadcasting industry needed to figure out a way to share their metadata, and
once they began working together, they came up with some proposed metadata elements as early
as 2003. They presented these elements at the 2003 Dublin Core Conference. (Mohn 2007) Most
broadcasting stations recognized a need to share their metadata. In fact, it was seen as essential to
create a medium in which they could share their resources. The above-mentioned universities
and stakeholders formed a collaborative group to work on the project and they toiled away for
two years, developing a product that was simple and streamlined. Version 1 of PBCore was
launched in 2005, and in 2007 1.1 was published in the Spring. (Mohr 2007.) Version 2.0 was
released in 2011. In 2014, the American Archive of Public Broadcasting took over creating and
adding any and all future developments to PBCore. This organization not only continues to work
on bettering PBCore, but it is also tasked with reassessing the schema, it does outreach with
PBCore users and potential users, creates resources for the PBCore community, and makes
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improvements to the PBCore website. (PBCore, 2015)

PBCore is based on Dublin Core, with elements and subelements. A subelement describes the
element in very much the same way that a qualifier in Dublin Core describes its elements. There
are four categories of elements:
*Content. The intellectual content of the work is described
*Intellectual property. The creators work and business and legal metadata is described
*Instantiation. The physical and/or digital items are described.
*Extensions. The localized metadata elements that are customized by PBCore users. (Mohn
2007)

Significance of Schema
Once the Corporation for Public Broadcasting reviewed the different schemas that were
currently available, it was decided that what was out there required either too advanced
cataloging knowledge or the schemas were too narrowly focused on broadcasting and did not
make room for the other resources that public broadcasting has to offer. (Cox et al. 2006)
Creating a standard metadata schema for this community, which includes PBS and NPR as well
as their hundreds of independent stations across the country and community partners, such as
museums and schools, was crucial. A schema was that was based on Dublin Core was selected
because while it has standards that must be adhered to, it is flexible enough to accommodate
unique local needs. The public broadcasting industry is special because ownership of the
stations, both television and radio, is local and they have strong ties to their individual
communities. It was decided that creating a schema to reflect and encompass this reality was
better, and ultimately more efficient than adopting an already-existing schema.

How the Schema Is Used

The latest version of PBCore, PBCore 2.1, is composed is four content classes, 15 containers,
and 82 elements. PBCore is framed by XML attributes. (PBCore.org 2015) The attributes
describe the elements a little more, but not all the elements have them. Each XML document has
exactly one root, or parent, element. They are pbcoreDescriptionDocument, pbcoreCollection,
and pbcoreInstantiationDocument. PbcoreDescriptionDocument represents an individual PBCore
record. pbcoreCollection is not the same type of collection one thinks of when thinking about a
librarys collection. Rather, what it means is it groups a lot of Description Documents together
for instances of serialization, so all your Downton Abbey paraphernalia can be housed under the
same roof. Finally, pbcoreInstantiationDocument is only used if you want to create a completely
stand-alone record.
The parent XML element is further broken down into classes. The Intellectual Content class
describes the metadata what is the title? The subject? The genre? The Intellectual Property
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provides the metadata regarding the resources creator, distributor, and publisher. The Extension
class is what makes it possible for local affiliates to provide unique metadata by including
information from other metadata standards. The Instantiation class describes all the technical
information about the resource. These classes are further broken down into elements, and must
be listed in a specific hierarchy. Elements include pbcoreAudienceRating, which is exactly what
it sounds like. It determines the appropriate audience for the resource.
InstantiationChannelConfiguration lists how the information is arranged, such as 8-track
stereo. (pbcore.org 2015)

Example of a PBCore Schema

<?xml version=1.0 encoding=UTF-8?>
<pbcoreCollection xmlns:xsi=http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance
xsi:schemaLocation=http://www.pbcore.org/PBCore/PBCoreNamespace.html
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/WGBH/PBCore_2.1/master/pbcore-2.1xsd
xmlns=http://www.pbcore.org/PBCore/PBCoreNamespace.html
collectionTitle=WILL World War II Oral History Project on Will from Illinois Public Media
collectionDescription=A collection of records from WILL World War II Oral History Project
on WILL
collectionSource=Illinois Public Media, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
collectionRef=http://will.illinois.edu/wwii/pbcorecollection
collectionDate=2014-10-16T19:18:20-05:00>
<pbcoreDescriptionDocument>
<pbcoreAssetType>Item</pbcoreAssetType>
<pbcoreAssetDate dateType=broadcast>2008-07-01T12:02:00-05:00</pbcoreAssetDate>
<pbcoreIdentifier source=Illinois Public Media>james-stallmeyer-2008-0701</pbcoreIdentifier>
<pbcoreTitle titleType=Episode>Oral History Interview with James
Stallmeyer</pbcoreTitle>
<pbcoreSubject subjectType=topic source=Illinois Public
Media>History</pbcoreSubject><pbcoreSubject subjectType=topic source=Illinois Public
Media>Military</pbcoreSubject>
<pbcoreCreator><creator>Brighton, Jack</creator><creatorRole>web
producer</creatorRole></pbcoreCreator>
<pbcoreTitle titleType=Program>World War II Central Illinois Stories</pbcoreTitle>
<pbcoreDescription descriptionType=Abstract></pbcoreDescription>
<pbcoreGenre source=PBCore Genre List>History</pbcoreGenre>
</pbcoreDescriptionDocument>
Taken from:
https://github.com/WGBH/PBCore_2.1/blob/master/example_records/pbcore_collection.xml

Additional Reading
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(2015, June 1). Retrieved October 18, 2015, from http://www.pbcore.org.webinar-recap-a-briefhistory-of-pbcore

Adamich, T. (2011, July 1). PBCore and Media Asset Management Metadata Standards Review
1. Technicalities, 11-13.
Cox, M., & Mulder, E. (2006). Descriptive metadata for television: An end-to-end introduction.
Burlington, MA: Focal Press.
Mohn, S. (2007, July 1). PBCore: Public Broadcastings Metadata Scheme for Audio and
Visual Files. MAC Newsletter, 35-40.
White, A., Baker, A., Bloss, M., & Burrows, P. (n.d.). PBCore the Public Broadcasting
Metadata Initiative: Progress Report. Retrieved October 18, 2015, from
dcpapers.dublincore.org/pubs/article/download/749/745

Conclusion
In conclusion, I was left with the impression that PBCore is very much a product of Public
Broadcasting in general. It was created by a group of people who care very much about public
radio and television, who wanted to enable the individuals who work in these arenas to have
access to as much metadata as possible in order to help them find and utilize the resources they
have. Like many other metadata schemas, they built off Dublin Core and wanted to make it
richer to be able to provide more descriptive metadata, and put it in XML format so it could be
machine readable. I especially appreciated the fact that a unique class, called the Extension
class, enables small affiliate stations to contribute descriptive metadata for their local-only
programming. I believe that future goals for the program will include keeping PBCore
backwards-compatible as long as possible (PBCore 2.1 should be compatible with PBCore 2.0,
etc.) and also they hope to merge some of their elements with EBUCore, the original standard
for descriptive metadata.

Categories for the Descriptions of Works of Art (CDWA)

Description and History of Schema
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The Categories for the Description of Works of Art (CDWA) was created and developed in
the early 1990s and first published in 1996. Like most schemas, the making of it was a
collaborative effort involving many people. The CDWA is a product of the Art Information
Task Force (AITF). AITF is an initiative sponsored by the College Art Association of America
and the J. Paul Getty Trust. It grouped together individuals such as art historians, art
information professionals, and information providers in order for them to work together to
establish guidelines for describing works of art, architecture, and other textural objects.
(Getty.edu 2015) The new schema also received a two year matching grant from the National
Endowment for the Humanities (Zeng and Qin 2008)
While CDWA Lite provides an XML framework to make it machine-readable, CDWA
provides the framework that already-existing art information systems can be mapped to, thus
enabling them to have a common language to link the data in an open environment. CDWA is
mapped to Cultural Objects Name Authority and CIDOC.CRM, so there is a controlled
vocabulary associated with it. (Getty.edu 2015)
Cataloging Cultural Objects (CCO), CDWA Lite, and VRA all evolved from CDWA.
Patricia Harpring best describes CDWA as a schema that describes the content of art databases
by articulating a conceptual framework for describing and accessing information about works of
art. (Harpring 2007)

Significance of Schema
Unlike libraries, who have used MARC since the 1960s, museums do not have a long
tradition of data standards or formal cataloging. In the late 1980s, information networks began
to rapidly grow, and the community of art information experts recognized that there was a
growing need for a set of metadata standards for describing paintings and various cultural art
objects. (Baca 2000) The CDWA was designed to not only provide descriptive metadata for the
art world, but also to enable widespread sharing of union catalogs. (Lubas & Jackson 2013) It
contains the concepts that create the framework for the metadata, concepts that are uniquely
important to the art world: item group, volume, collection, series, set, and component. (Lubas
& Jackson 2013) While some of those concepts seem familiar to other frameworks, such as item
or series, these concepts are tailored specifically for the art world.

How the Schema Is Used

CDWA has 31 broad categories and more than 380 subcategories. 8 categories are said to be
core; that is, they represent the minimum amount of information necessary to identify and
describe a work. (Zeng & Qin, 2008) The 8 core elements are Object/Work Type (is it a
painting? A sculpture?), Classification Terms (European paintings), Titles or Name Text
(Starry Night), Creation (Creator: Vincent Van Gogh, Creation Date: 1889), Measurements,
Materials (oil on canvas), Subject Matter, and Current Location. (Baca 2000)
A category I have not seen in any other schema until now is the Current Location element.
Since museums loan out their works to other museums with regularity for long-term visits, it
makes sense that this is a core element. The museum world would want to know at any given
time the location of Starry Night.
CDWA seems to be set up similarly to Dublin Core in that it just provides a framework of
description and is not in and of itself compatible with computer programs. It can be mapped to
CDWA Lite, the machine-readable version.

Example of a CDWA Schema

Object/Work Type
Classification
Title/Name
Creation
Creation Date
Measurements
Materials
Subject Matter
Current Location

Bust
Sculpture
Bust of Jacob van Reyersberg
Artist: Rombout Verhulst (1624-1698, active
in Holland)
1671
63 cm height
Marble
Jacob van Reyersberg, portrait
J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles, CA
84.SA.743)

Taken from http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/inside/units/bibcontrol/osmc/cdwa.pdf

Additional Reading

Baca, M. (2000, March 1). A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words: Metadata for Art Objects and
Their Visual Surrogates. Retrieved October 21, 2015, from
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/inside/units/bibcontrol/osmc/MBaca.pdf
Harpring, P. (2007). CCO Overview and Description. Visual Resources Association Bulletin,
34(1), 34-44. Retrieved October 21, 2015, from Library and Information Science Source.
Harpring, P., & Baca, M. (2014, March 1). Retrieved October 21, 2015, from
http://www.getty.edu/research/publications/electronic_publications/cdwa/index.html
Lubas, R., & Jackson, A. (2013). Using CDWA and CDWA Lite. In The metadata manual: A
practical workbook (pp. 93-133). Cambridge: Chandos Publishing.
Zeng, M., & Qin, J. (2008). Current Standards. In Metadata (pp. 32-39). New York, New York:
Neal-Schuman.

Conclusion
Although I have kept the CDWA very simple in this metadata schema report, it is actually
quite exhaustive. It has the potential to be an extremely detailed and inclusive taxonomy of art
objects so it can be customized for a variety of different audiences. The CDWA provides the
framework that then be mapped to an XML-encoding scheme such as CDWA Lite. This also
can be kept very simple or made to be extremely complex, depending on its use.
Displaying certain collections online is the norm now for many museums and independent
projects, so having a structured metadata schema is imperative. Without it, delightful sites such
as http://www.whatjanesaw.org, a truly fantastic website that allows the viewer to see works of
art that Jane Austen saw when she went to the British Institution in 1813, would not be possible.

Resources

(2015, June 1). Retrieved October 18, 2015, from http://www.pbcore.org.webinar-recap-a-briefhistory-of-pbcore

Adamich, T. (2011, July 1). PBCore and Media Asset Management Metadata Standards Review
1. Technicalities, 11-13.
Baca, M. (2000, March 1). A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words: Metadata for Art Objects and
Their Visual Surrogates. Retrieved October 21, 2015, from
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/inside/units/bibcontrol/osmc/MBaca.pdf
Cox, M., & Mulder, E. (2006). Descriptive metadata for television: An end-to-end introduction.
Burlington, MA: Focal Press.
Guenther, R., & Radebaugh, J. (2004). Understanding Metadata. Retrieved October 21, 2015,
from http://www.niso.org/publications/press/UnderstandingMetadata.pdf
Harpring, P. (2007). CCO Overview and Description. Visual Resources Association Bulletin,
34(1), 34-44. Retrieved October 21, 2015, from Library and Information Science Source.
Harpring, P., & Baca, M. (2014, March 1). Retrieved October 21, 2015, from
http://www.getty.edu/research/publications/electronic_publications/cdwa/index.html
Lubas, R., & Jackson, A. (2013). Using CDWA and CDWA Lite. In The metadata manual: A
practical workbook (pp. 93-133). Cambridge: Chandos Publishing.
Mohn, S. (2007, July 1). PBCore: Public Broadcastings Metadata Scheme for Audio and
Visual Files. MAC Newsletter, 35-40.
White, A., Baker, A., Bloss, M., & Burrows, P. (n.d.). PBCore the Public Broadcasting
Metadata Initiative: Progress Report. Retrieved October 18, 2015, from
dcpapers.dublincore.org/pubs/article/download/749/745
Zeng, M., & Qin, J. (2008). Current Standards. In Metadata (pp. 32-39). New York, New York:
Neal-Schuman.

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