heckman thesis.pdf

3.2. METADATA APPLICATIONS 37
Figure 3.2: User modeling server according to [Fink, 2004]
3.2 Metadata Applications
In this section we present the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, the Customer Profile Exchange,
the Human Markup Language and the Composite Capabilities/Preference Profile.
The discussion and comparison will follow in section 3.4.
3.2.1 Dublin Core Metadata
The Dublin Core 9 , see [Manola and Miller, 2004], is a set of metadata elements for describing
documents. The term metadata refers to data used to identify, describe or locate information
resources. While structured metadata processed by computers is relatively new, the
basic concept of metadata has been used for many years in helping manage and use large
collections of information. The element set was originally developed at the Metadata Workshop
in Dublin, Ohio in 1995. The Dublin Core has subsequently been modified on further
workshops. The goal of the Dublin Core is to provide a minimal set of descriptive elements
that facilitate the automated indexing and description of document-like network objects, in a
manner similar to a library card catalog. In addition, the Dublin Core is meant to be sufficiently
simple to be understood and used by the wide range of others and casual publishers
who contribute information to the internet. Dublin Core elements are nowadays widely used
in documenting internet resources. The Dublin Core Metadata Element Set contains definitions
for the following properties:
9 Dublin Core homepage: http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/