Support DCMI Activities

Why Support DCMI?

DCMI is a not-for-profit organization committed to the development and open availability of resources that support a healthy global metadata ecology. Your contributions help ensure that DCMI can continue to advance this commitment through its support of innovation in metadata design and best practices for the global metadata community. In addition to the efforts of a broad community of volunteer metadata experts, the work of DCMI requires dedicated, paid effort. These paid efforts include:

• Managing ongoing discussion of current DCMI-wide 'work themes';
• Setting up and managing international and regional events;
• Curation and open availability of the meeting assets including proceedings, project reports and meeting minutes;
• Creation and delivery of training resources in metadata best practices including tutorials, webinars and workshops;
• Managing long term curation of DCMI specifications and metadata terms namespaces; and
• Coordinating the global community of DCMI volunteers.

To donate, pick the desired ChipIn form to the left—it's simple!
ChipIn contributions in US$ (See: Currency Conversion)

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Donate to Conference Fellowships

Donations to the Conference Fellowships fund will be allocated to select attendees to the DCMI International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications. Funds are intended to help defray travel expenses and registration fees. Determinations of scholarship awards are made by a subcommittee of the Advisory Board. Selection criteria include financial need and potential benefit to the recipients through attendance. Recipients will be asked to assist with session-related activities during the conference.

Donate to Current Work Themes

By making a work theme donation through ChipIn!, you both support the specific work of the theme and 'vote' regarding which theme or themes are most important to you. In general, work theme donations support the granting of stipends to community members who take on editorial responsibilities for specific work themes.

Platform-independent Application Profiles

The DCMI Abstract Model (DCAM), published as a DCMI Recommendation in 2007, provides an abstract syntax for packaging Semantic-Web-compatible data in validatable record formats. DCAM was designed to bridge the modern paradigm of the unbounded Linked Data graph and the more familiar paradigm of the validatable metadata record, locally managed and constrained using a myriad of software platforms and implementation technologies. For five years, DCAM has inspired a wide range of deployment experiences, and the core RDF standards themselves continue to be extended. The activity "platform-independent application profiles" is re-evaluating the need and requirements for a common language to express metadata design patterns, both as templates for Linked-Data-compatible data formats and as reference points for creating and consuming coherent metadata within communities of discourse and practice.

Monitor & participate in this activity:

• Meeting Minutes & Work Agenda: DCAM Revision activity wiki
• Discussion: Architecture Forum mailing list & list archive

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Mapping Diverse Vocabularies

While DCMI Metadata Terms and other core vocabularies increase the coherence of metadata by providing shared reference points, the unavoidable proliferation of diverse but overlapping vocabularies threatens to create metadata silos. A key part of the solution is to create machine-readable mappings. The activity "mapping diverse vocabularies" aims at mapping DCMI metadata terms to related terms in other vocabularies. In the absence of well-established practices for publishing and maintaining such mappings, this activity aspires to establish a workflow and publication practices that can be adopted by other vocabulary maintainers. The starting point for this activity is a mapping to the terms defined by the Schema.org initiative.

Monitor & participate in this activity:

• Meeting Minutes & Work Agenda: Schema.org mapping activity wiki
• Discussion: Architecture Forum mailing list & list archive

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Sustainable Vocabularies

As a foundation for applications, the value of any given vocabulary depends on the perceived certainty that the vocabulary—both its machine-readable schemas and human-readable specification documents—will remain reliably accessible over time and that its URIs will not be sold, re-purposed, or simply forgotten. In order to raise awareness of this issue, DCMI has formulated an agreement with the FOAF Project, which is owned by individuals, with contingency plans for transferring maintenance control in the short or long term should exigent circumstances require. This activity examines the issues around vocabulary sustainability and governance with the goal of formulating best practices and, ultimately, of ensuring that our vocabularies will be preserved by society's long-term memory institutions.

Monitor & participate in this activity:

• Meeting Minutes & Work Agenda: Vocabulary Management Community wiki
• Discussion: Vocabulary Management Community mailing list & list archive