Metadata Standards

Metadata Standards Updates (2020s) & Resources

New & Notable developments

• ADMS (Asset Description Metadata Schema) Vocabulary (ADMS 2.0), 2024-02-01
  • First Webinar on ADMS event, 2023-04-25, with Slides || Meeting minutes || Recording
• Data Catalog Vocabulary (DCAT) - Version 3, W3C Working Draft- W3C Editor, 2024-10
• Data Privacy Vocabulary (DPV) version 2.0, submitted 2024-04-20 || PDF || Webpage
• Data Documentation Initiative (DDI), an international standard for describing the data produced by surveys and other observational methods in the social, behavioral, economic, and health sciences.
  • "Introduction to the DDI Metadata Standard" [DCMI Webinar, 2021-04-21]
• EPUB 3.3 W3C Recommendation 2025-03-27
  • EPUB 3.3 Implementation report: 2025-05-02
• US Health and Human Services. 2024. Health Data, Technology, and Interoperability: Certification Program Updates, Algorithm Transparency, and Information Sharing. [Final Rule]. 2024-01-09
• ISO 21127:2023 Information and documentation A reference ontology for the interchange of cultural heritage information [previous ISO 21127:2014]. It corresponds to that of CIDOC CRM community CIDOC-CRM version 7.1.3, 2024-02 [Ref: CIDOC CRM News 2024-02-26]
• NetCDF Climate and Forecast (CF) Metadata Conventions Version 1.9, 2021-09-10
• NISO Z39.105-2023, Content Profile/Linked Document, 2023-12-12
• W3C Accessibility Standards Overview || All Standards and Drafts Updated 2024
  • EPUB Accessibility 1.1 Conformance and Discoverability Requirements for EPUB publications, 2024-10-17
• W3C Strings on the Web: Language and Direction Metadata, W3C Group Draft Note, 2024-10-17
• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2, W3C Recommendation, 2024-12-12

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Standards and Guidelines

• ISO: Standards by ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 42 Artificial intelligence
  • [a list of standards/or projects]
    • [Published] -33 (as of 2024-11-06)
    • [Under development] -35 (as of 2024-11-06)
• EU: EU Artificial intelligence Act [Webpage]; [The AI Act Explorer]
  • High-level summary of the AI Act, 2024-02-27, updated 2024-05-30
  • Ethics guidelines for trustworthy AI, 2019-04-08
  • Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 of the European Parliament and of the Council
    • laying down harmonised rules on artificial intelligence, 2024-06-13
• UNESCO: Guidance for Generative AI in Education and Research,2023
• U.S. The White House. Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, 2022-
  • This a set of five principles and associated practices to help guide the design, use, and deployment of automated systems to protect the rights of the American public in the age of AI.
• W3C. AI & the Web: Understanding and managing the impact of Machine Learning models on the Web, 2024-08-20.
• MPEG (Moving Picture Expert Group)
  • MPAI (Moving Picture, Audio and Data Coding by Artificial Intelligence) Artificial Intelligence Framework (MPAI-AIF) Version 2.0
  • MPEG Standards & Exploration, a full overview over all standards developed by MPEG
• NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) Standards.gov.
• AI Standards Development Activities with Federal Involvement, 2024-.
• Artificial Intelligence Risk Management Framework: Generative Artificial Intelligence Profile, 2024-07-25
• Government of Canada - Accessibility Standards Canada
  • ASC-6.2 Accessible and Equitable Artificial Intelligence Systems. 2025-03. [Status: Public Review]

Current standards

1 Metadata for general purposes

• Dublin Core
  • Specifications
    • DCMI Metadata Terms, updated 2020-01
    • LRMI Terms (RDF) 2020-11-12, Learning Resource Metadata (LRMI)
    • DC Tabular Application Profiles (DC TAP) draft specification, 2021-04
  • "DCMI Today" [video, DCMI-2021]
    
• Schema.org
  • Schemas, current version
  • Releases - summary
• BIBFRAME
  • BIBFRAME 2.x Vocabulary || BIBFRAME 2 Category View
  • BIBFRAME Frequently Asked Questions
  • "Bibframe Implementation" [panel, DCMI-2021]
• MODS
  • MODS 3.8, 2022-09-16
• Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS)
  • Version 1.12.1, 2019-10
• IFLA Standards - Linked open data versions
  • The ISBD (International Standard Bibliographic Description) Vocabularies
  • The LRM (Library Reference Model) Vocabularies || [original]
  • The UNIMARC Vocabularies
  • MulDiCat (Multilingual Dictionary of Cataloguing Terms and Concepts)

2 Metadata for Cultural Objects and Visual Resources

• CDWA (Categories for the Description of Works of Art)
  • CDWA, revised 2022
  • CDWA Lite 1.1, revised 2019
  • Crosswalk of CDWA with other Standards, Revised 2024
    
• LIDO (Lightweight Information Describing Objects)
  • LIDO 1.1, released 2021-12. Prepared for CIDOC LIDO Working Group by LIDO-DE Working Group.
• Linked Art Data Model, a profile of CIDOC-CRM.
  • The model
  • The API
  • 2025-02-19 Version 1.0 of the model and API released. [1.0 announcem]
• VRA Core
  • VRA Core 4.0
    • VRA Core 4.0 Chinese Translations [anounced 2022-08-23]
    • Available for downloading from https://www.loc.gov/standards/vracore/schemas.html
      • Chinese - Simplified (last updated 08/15/2022)
      • Chinese - Traditional (last updated 08/15/2022)
  • VRA Core 5.0 (in development)
    • "Presenting VRA Core 5: A Standard with Accessibility Baked In, Not Bolted On…and the Tools to Use It" [article, 2022-01]
• Object ID
  • Currently Object ID is available in Arabic, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovenian, Spanish, and Ukrainian.

3 Metadata for Research Data

• Data Catalog Vocabulary (DCAT)
  • Data Catalog Vocabulary (DCAT) - Version 3, W3C Recommendation, 2024-08-22.
    • "Introduction to the W3C Data Catalog Ontology (DCAT)" [DCMI Webinar, 2020-11-12]
• Darwin Core
  • Darwin Core Standards (comprised of 5 vocabularies and 11 documents)
  • Darwin Core quick reference guide, 2021
  • Simple Darwin Core, 2023-09
• Generic Earth Observation Metadata Standard (GEOMS)
  • GEOMS v1.0, 2021-12
• DataCite Metadata Schema
  • DataCite Metadata Schema v4.4, 2021-03

4 Metadata for Archives, Preservation, Provenance

• Encoded Archival Description (EAD)
  • EAD3 1.1.1, 2019-12
  • EAC-CPF Encoded Archival Context—Corporate Bodies, Persons, and Families, Draft Schema Version 2.0 (2021-03)
• PREMIS (for Preservation Metadata)
  • PREMIS 3 Ontology, 2018-10
    • "Understanding PREMIS: An Overview of the PREMIS Data Dictionary for Preservation Metadata" 2021-07. (Czech, English, German, Italian, and Portuguese)
• PROV (for Provenance)
  • PROV Family of Documents, W3C (12 recommendations and notes)
  • PROV-DC (Note): a mapping between PROV-O and Dublin Core Terms
• ArchiveGrid, supporting EAD 2002, EAD 3, MARC, PDF, and HTML
  • Related to the IMLS-funded Building a National Finding Aid Network (NAFAN) project (2020-09 to 2023-02)

5 Metadata for Publishing and Press Communications

• IPTC Metadata Standards Website (multiple standards)
  • IPTC Photo Metadata Standard 2024.1, Revised 2024-11-27, including:
    • IPTC Core Metadata Schema 1.5
    • IPTC Extension Metadata Schema 1.8
  • IPTC’s rNews standard - NewsML-G2 (including EventsML-G2 and SportsML-G2). NewsML-G2 Guidelines, Revised 2024-09-12 
    
• PBCore
  • Elements online | PBCore 2.1 Data model visualization | Recorded PBCore webinar series, 2021-09 & 2021-10
    
  • EPUB
    • EPUB Accessibility Techniques 1.1 W3C Group Note, 2024-07-04
      • 3. Discovery metadata techniques
        

6 Standardized schemes

• Language Metadata Table standard (LMT) Website (download current versions)
  • LMT v6.0 includes 364 language codes and display values – with more being researched. 2025-01-04.

7 Guidelines

• NISO RP-41-2023, Video and Audio Metadata Guidelines
  Publication Date: February 13, 2023 ISBN: 978-1-950980-19-2
  DOI: https://doi.org/10.3789/niso-rp-41-2023
• ALA Institutional Repository (ALAIR) Core Competencies for Cataloging and Metadata Professional Librarians, 2023-12-13

8 Special resources

• Wikidata
  • Acts as central storage for the structured data of its Wikimedia sister projects, including Wikipedia, Wikivoyage, Wiktionary, Wikisource, and others. [Home]
  • As a data model that supports description standards for particular domains, such as the premodern manuscripts
  • As a hub for authority alignment and aggregation