The use of Metadata in Denmark

Abstract

A wide range of metadata projects in Denmark over the last 4-5 years are described. A new Danish legal deposit act in 1997 facilitated cooperation in the creation of a common application form for Danish Dublin Core including the basic fifteen elements and four sub-elements. The form is used for creation of metadata in government publications and as application form for legal deposit and inclusion in the national bibliography. Then several public libraries initiated projects developed with different views on how to make the Internet accessible for the common user. Not all the projects use Dublin Core from the start but that will change. Actually some research library based subject gateways have been launched and all of these projects use Dublin Core based on a common solution. In 2001 a very ambitious governmental information project was started, where the ambition is to cover all documents on governmental and municipal servers on the net. Finally are described the efforts to gather all registrations from the projects to be included in the National Union Catalogue.