A Multilingual Metadata Schema Registry Based on RDF Schema

Abstract

This paper describes a multilingual metadata schema registry which has been developed at the University of Library and Information Science in Tsukuba, Japan. The registry currently has reference translations of Dublin Core Metadata Element Set written in 22 languages, DC Qualifiers and the DCMI Type Vocabulary written in English and Japanese, along with descriptive elements of the Nippon Cataloging Rules. The registry is realized using XML technologies; metadata schemas are expressed in the RDF Schema language, the RDF description is handled by a Java servlet using XSLT stylesheet. This paper shows the functions and the architecture of the registry.