ICSM ISO19115-1 Metadata Best Practice Guide

Resource Reference Date ★★★★★

To manage resource and notification systems such as giving updates to users it is useful to include in our metadata temporal information relating to resource creation, publication, revision, etc.

   
Element Name date
Parent MD_Metadata.identificationInfo>MD_Identificationcitation>CI_Citation
Class/Type CI_Date
Governance Agency, Domain
Purpose Discovery, Identification
Audience machine resource - ⭑ ⭑ ⭑
  general - ⭑ ⭑ ⭑
  resource manager - ⭑ ⭑ ⭑ ⭑ ⭑
  specialist - ⭑ ⭑ ⭑ ⭑
Metadata type descriptive
ICSM Level of Agreement ⭑⭑⭑

Definition

A named and dated event associated with the cited resource (in ISO 8601 format)

ISO Obligation

Discussion

There should be at least one instance of a resource reference date in a metadata record (dateType - creation), but there should be multiple - including publication and as many lastUpdate entries as needed

The CI_DateType CodeList contains 16 values. Which values are of most import needs further discussion. The ability to crosswalk easily with CKAN and DCAT is of high concern. These external catalogues commonly have a single date field. Which dateType we map to this field is of interest in discussions regarding the recommended dateTypes used.

Relation of Metadata dateInfo to resource reference date needs to be discussed. The resource reference date is documented as the date that should be used for the discovery of resources other than services. (For services MD_Metadata.identificationInfo>SV_ServiceIdentification.citation>CI_Citation.date is used.)

When does the metadata dataInfo require updating? For instance, is it okay to not update the metadata dataInfo when the resource reference date is updated if nothing else has changed? Our best practice guide should address these and related issues.

ICSM Best Practice Recommendations

Therefore - to provide an idea of the age, validity and other time dependant properties of a resource, it is important to capture the important events that happened or will happen to a particular resource in the resource reference date element. One of these important events must be of dateType “creation”. Creation is a significant date in regards to copyright. Other important date types are “publication” and “lastUpdate”.

It is recommended that Resource Date include -

Also Consider

Other discussion

Date and DateTime: When is it okay to use Date as opposed to DateTime?

DCAT: encoded using the relevant ISO 8601 Date and Time compliant string [DATETIME] and typed using the appropriate XML Schema datatype [XMLSCHEMA11-2]

Crosswalk considerations

Dublin core / CKAN / data.gov.au

Maps to date (publication, update)

DCAT

Maps to dct:issued* and *dct:modified

RIF-CS

Maps to Date

Examples

XML

</mdb:MD_Metadata>
....
  <mdb:identificationInfo>
   <mri:MD_DataIdentification>
     <mri:citation>
      <cit:CI_Citation>
      ....
        <cit:date>
         <cit:CI_Date>
           <cit:date>
            <gco:Date>2018-06-11</gco:Date>
           </cit:date>
           <cit:dateType>
            <cit:CI_DateTypeCode 
            codeList="https://schemas.isotc211.org/19115/resources
            /Codelist/cat/codelists.xml#CI_DateTypeCode" 
            codeListValue="creation"/>
           </cit:dateType>
         </cit:CI_Date>
        </cit:date>
        <cit:date>
         <cit:CI_Date>
           <cit:date>
            <gco:Date>2019-06-11</gco:Date>
           </cit:date>
           <cit:dateType>
            <cit:CI_DateTypeCode 
            codeList="https://schemas.isotc211.org/19115/resources
            /Codelist/cat/codelists.xml#CI_DateTypeCode" 
            codeListValue="lastUpdate"/>
           </cit:dateType>
         </cit:CI_Date>
        </cit:date>
        ....
      </cit:CI_Citation>
     </mri:citation>
     ....
   </mri:MD_DataIdentification>
  </mdb:identificationInfo>
....
</mdb:MD_Metadata>

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UML diagrams

Recommended elements highlighted in yellow

resourceDate

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