ICSM ISO19115-1 Metadata Best Practice Guide

Resource Series ★★★

Very often, resources identified in a catalogue are part of a larger body of work. When this is the case it is useful to document such a relation in the metadata. The resource metadata element series is designed for this purpose.

Definition

Information about the series, or aggregate resource, of which the resource is a part.

ISO Obligation

ICSM Best Practice Recommendations

From class CI_Series

Discussion

The content of all three CI_Series elements are free text and optional. How one would link back to the series metadata is unclear. It could be captured in “Name” as a resolvable URI. Perhaps through the Parent Metadata element? What is the relation between “Series” and “Parent Metadata”

It is conceivable that there may be more than one series to which a dataset may belong. The dataset may be part of a time series while also part of a thematic series. But, by the standard, a resource may only belong to one cited series. Guidance needs to be developed for users on this topic.

Recommendations

Series has proven to be a difficult element to pin down for a number of reasons. Below is a list of issues that should be included in good practice guidance on this element:

Until these topics are resolved we do not recommend the inclusion of series as recommended elements. If series information is to be captured, the minimum information needed would be CI_Series > name.

It may be better to use other elements such as parentMetadata or associatedResource to capture series type relationships.

Crosswalk considerations

DCAT

Maps to prov:wasMemberOf

RIF-CS

Maps to Context

Also Consider

Examples

XML

<mdb:MD_Metadata>
....
   <mdb:identificationInfo>
      <mri:MD_DataIdentification>
      ....
         <mri:citation>
            <cit:CI_Citation>
               ....
               <cit:series>
                  <cit:CI_Series>
                     <cit:name>
                        <gco:CharacterString>OpenWork GeoData Series
                        </gco:CharacterString>
                     </cit:name>
                     <cit:issueIdentification gco:nilReason="missing">
                        <gco:CharacterString/>
                     </cit:issueIdentification>
                  </cit:CI_Series>
               </cit:series>
               .....
           </cit:CI_Citation>
         </mri:citation>
         ....
      </mri:MD_DataIdentification>
   </mdb:identificationInfo>
....
</mdb:MD_Metadata>

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UML diagrams

Recommended elements highlighted in yellow

dataCitationSeries

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