One-to-one principle of the Dublin Core: application in Catalan university repositories of special and heritage collections

Abstract

The One-to-One Principle of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative aims to ensure distinct descriptions for conceptually different entities, such as originals and their digital versions. This study examines the application of the principle in five Catalan university repositories with special collections, analysing a random sample of 100 records across fields such as type, format, date, author, source, relation, and publisher. The results reveal frequent violations of the principle, mainly due to the blending of metadata for originals and digitised versions and inconsistencies in field usage. These findings underscore both the theoretical and practical challenges of applying Dublin Core correctly, and the need for clearer guidance and better metadata practices to support semantic clarity and interoperability.