The links below lead to some of the computer-related and controlled vocabulary standards most useful for museum functions. The first four categories pertain to resource description and retrieval, chiefly in the form of textual metadata, within and among systems and institutions; the last two comprise standards for digital images and other media resources. Links with an asterisk* download PDF files which require Adobe Reader for viewing.

The Getty Standards Program's Introduction to Metadata provides a useful sense of context for many of the resources listed here. Also useful are Metadata Made Simpler* and Understanding Metadata, both Acrobat documents downloadable from NISO, the National Information Standards Organization.

GENERAL COMPUTING STANDARDS
These underlying technologies can assist information exchange in museums, libraries, and archives, as well as a wide range of other contexts.

• The Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH)


• Resource Description Framework (RDF)


• eXtensible Markup Language (XML)


• Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML)


• Z39.50

COMMUNITY-SPECIFIC IMPLEMENTATIONS OF GENERAL STANDARDS
These implementations use more general-purpose standards to meet the needs of specific communities of users.

• CIMI Dublin Core*, using the Dublin Core (PDF)


• CIMI XML Schema for the Description of Museum Objects


• CIMI Z39.50 Profile, using Z39.50 for cultural heritage information


• The Dublin Core (DC)


• Encoded Archival Description (EAD), using SGML/XML for archival description


• The Metadata Encoding & Transmission Standard (METS)

COMMUNITY-SPECIFIC DATA STRUCTURES
These category systems offer frameworks for logically structured descriptive or interpretive metadata about collections (in alphabetical order). They support in-house information retrieval and also can enable information exchange, aggregated access, and interoperability among museum systems. By supporting distributed access to metadata about collections, metadata structures can aid in cross-institutional research and public discovery of museum resources. Metadata "crosswalks" can offer conduits between museum systems based on different data structures.

• Categories for the Description of Works of Art (CDWA)


• International Committee for Documentation (CIDOC) Information Categories


• Object ID


• Machine-Readable Cataloging (MARC21), mostly used in libraries


• Metadata Object Description Standard (MODS), mostly used in libraries


• Record Export for Art and Cultural Heritage (REACH) Element Set


• Visual Resources Association (VRA) Core Categories

COMMUNITY-SPECIFIC DATA CONTENT STANDARDS
These standards offer consistent rules and guidelines for populating the categories laid out in metadata structures. Content standards enable information about collections to be described consistently. This makes information retrieval more effective.

• Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (2nd Ed.) (not online), used by libraries


• Cataloguing Cultural Objects (CCO)


• Describing Archives: a Content Standard (DA:CS) (not online), used by archives


• Graphic Materials - Rules for Describing Original Items and Historical Collections, used by libraries

COMMUNITY-SPECIFIC DATA VALUE STANDARDS
These standards offer established values for populating the categories laid out in metadata structures. Data value standards allow collections to be described with controlled vocabulary terms drawn from thesauri, name authorities, subject headings, and so on. Use of consistent terminology in cataloging makes information retrieval more effective. It also allows people to search in the same ways for holdings at multiple institutions, and can help make it feasible to automate such distributed searches from a single query.

• The Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT)


• ICONCLASS


• ITIS * North America, the Integrated Taxonomic Information System for biological names


• Library of Congress Authorities (LCSH, LCNAF)


• Medical Subject Headings (MESH)


• The Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN)


• The Thesaurus for Graphic Materials (TGM)


• The Union List of Artist Names (ULAN)

DIGITAL IMAGE STANDARDS
These standards allow museums to store and access digital images using an often unforeseeable variety of software applications and operating systems. Platform-independent access to media representations of items in collections supports long-term archival storage and retrieval, and can offer local and remote users more than just textual metadata for online viewing. Image-file standards constitute an area of common interest for this group and MCN's Digital Media SIG, as do such image metadata standards in process as the NISO Technical Metadata for Digital Still Images, now available in draft form.

• Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG)


• JPEG 2000, JPEG's successor and more


• Tagged Image File Format (TIFF)*, a proprietary format but de facto standard for still image storage and exchange (PDF)

TIME-BASED DIGITAL MEDIA STANDARDS
These standards allow museums to store and access digital video and audio and to synchronize such time-based resources in integrated online presentations.

• AES31 and other standards from the Audio Engineering Society


• MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, MPEG-7, MPEG-21


• RTP and RTSP for streaming media over the web


• Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) for web audio and video

Other pages of links to data standards are maintained by:

• The Consortium for the Computer Interchange of Museum Information (CIMI) ceased operation in 2003; however, many of their publications are still available.


• The Getty Standards and Digital Resource Management Program


• The Getty Information Institute and CIDOC


• The Library of Congress


• The Peabody Museum at Harvard

resource links last updated 2006-01-08 rcl