Element Views
Categories of Logically Related Elements
Current Version of PBS DLL Metadata is 1.2
Grouped by Categories of Logically Related Elements
This overview of the PBS DLL Metadata Elements groups the individual elements according to your categories of logically related elements. The categories are identified as:
- Subject Matter - Metadata describing a media item's intellectual content...who, when, where, and what is taking place or represented by the content in a media item.
- Audience Appeal - Metadata identifying the target audiences for a media item, or its suitability to specific groups.
- Authorship & Benefaction - Metadata identifying individuals or groups who authored or added to the intellectual content of a media item, as well as financial supporters in the creation of a program.
- Rights & Sharing - Metadata identifying the rights associated with a media item, copyright, ownerhsip, use restrictions, and shareability.
- Asset Identifiers & Locations - Provides unique asset ID info as well as location addresses.
- Formats & Technical Info - Metadata describing the file formats, codecs, and technical attributes of media items.
In the tables below, each element is arranged alphabetically within its themed category. Each entry is accompanied by a brief definition for that element. To display greater detail about an element's definition, click on the element name. The table's header and footer contain link options for the six categories enabling quick jumps to each category section within the table.
| Categories | Elements | Description |
Subject Matter |
Metadata describing a media item's intellectual content… who, when, where, and what is taking place or represented by the content in a media item. |
|
| Contextual Page URL | The address of an HTML page of contextual information that describes the digital asset. The reference page or site may include the digital asset as well as describe and link to other related digital assets that could be considered as a package of materials. | |
| Coverage Event | Keywords that identify an event associated with the intellectual content of a media item. These keywords are supplied by official PBS taxonomies, but may be based on keyword descriptions offered by the contributor of a media item. | |
| Coverage Event (Contributor) | Keywords that identify an event associated with the intellectual content of a media item. These keyword descriptions may be offered by the contributor of a media item in order to inform PBS official taxonomies. | |
| Coverage Geographical | Keywords that identify the region or location associated with the intellectual content of a media item. These keywords are supplied by official PBS taxonomies, but may be based on keyword descriptions offered by the contributor of a media item. | |
| Coverage Geographical (Contributor) | Keywords that identify the region or location associated with the intellectual content of a media item. These keyword descriptions may be offered by the contributor of a media item in order to inform PBS official taxonomies. | |
| Coverage Organization | Keywords that identify an entity, group, or organization associated with the intellectual content of a media item. These keywords are supplied by official PBS taxonomies, but may be based on keyword descriptions offered by the contributor of a media item. | |
| Coverage Organization (Contributor) | Keywords that identify an entity, group, or organization associated with the intellectual content of a media item. These keyword descriptions may be offered by the contributor of a media item in order to inform PBS official taxonomies. | |
| Coverage People | Keywords that identify a person associated with the intellectual content of a media item. These keywords are supplied by official PBS taxonomies, but may be based on keyword descriptions offered by the contributor of a media item. | |
| Coverage People (Contributor) | Keywords that identify a person associated with the intellectual content of a media item. These keyword descriptions may be offered by the contributor of a media item in order to inform PBS official taxonomies. | |
| Coverage Time Period | Keywords that identify the temporal period associated with the intellectual content of a media item. These keywords are supplied by official PBS taxonomies, but may be based on keyword descriptions offered by the contributor of a media item. | |
| Coverage Time Period (Contributor) | Keywords that identify the temporal period associated with the intellectual content of a media item. These keyword descriptions may be offered by the contributor of a media item in order to inform PBS official taxonomies. | |
| Curriculum General Topic | The topic covered by the digital asset; more general than a specific academic subject. | |
| Curriculum Standard | State standards correlations for educational topic areas and learning objectives. This metadata is supplied by official PBS taxonomies. | |
| Description Long | Free-form text or a narrative to report general notes, abstracts, or summaries about the intellectual content of the digital asset. | |
| Description Short | Brief free-form text or a narrative to report general notes, abstracts, or summaries about the intellectual content of the digital asset. | |
| Description Type | Paired with Description Long and Description Short, free-form text or a narrative to report general notes, abstracts, or summaries about the intellectual content of the digital asset. | |
| Keywords | Uncontrolled vocabulary / natural language words describing the digital asset. This metadata is supplied by PBS, but may be based on keyword descriptions offered by the contributor of a media item. | |
| Keywords (Contributor) | Uncontrolled vocabulary / natural language words describing the digital asset. This metadata may be offered by the contributor of a media item in order to inform PBS official taxonomies. | |
| Learning Objective | Identifies the educationally significant learning objective(s) for a media item, based on local and national core curriculum standards. This metadata is supplied by PBS. | |
| Relation Type | Identifies the type of intellectual content bond between a digital asset you are cataloging and another related digital asset. | |
| Title | The name given to the digital asset. | |
| Title Alternative | Another name given to a digital asset by the Creator or Publisher and used for any titles other than the main title, including subtitle, etc. | |
Audience Appeal |
Metadata identifying the target audiences for a media item, or its suitability to specific groups. |
|
| Accessibility | Identifies accessibility features of the digital asset. Free-text. | |
| Audience Level | The generalized type of audience, viewer, or listener for which a digital asset is targeted. | |
| Content Flags | A more general approach than audience ratings, this provides an additional indicator about the content and possible ratings. It reports if a media item may be judged appropriate (or inappropriate) in terms of its intellectual content, aesthetic values, language, depictions, or presentation style. | |
| Content Flags Description | One or more words or phrases identifying describing why a Content Flag term was selected. | |
| Grade Level | Targeted educational grade level for the digital asset. | |
| Language Primary | The main presentation language of the resource or media item. | |
| Language Alternate | An alternate language that is presented within the digital asset, separate from the main presentation language. | |
Authorship & Benefaction |
Metadata identifying individuals or groups who authored or added to the intellectual content of a media item, as well as financial supporters in the creation of a program. |
|
| Creator | The person or organization primarily responsible for creating the digital asset. | |
| Creator Type | Paired with Creator, specifies the kind of creator or intellectual content contributor. | |
| Creator Other | Identifies the person or organization that has made substantial contributions to the content within the digital asset. | |
| Creator Other Type | Paired with Creator Other, specifies the kind of creator or intellectual content contributor. | |
| Contributor | Provides information about contributions made to the asset outside of the scope of the intellectual creation of the asset in its current form. | |
| Contributor Type | Identifies the type of contributor described or named in Contributor. | |
Rights & Sharing |
Metadata identifying the rights associated with a media item, copyright, ownership, use restrictions, and shareability. |
|
| Copyright Year | Year of the copyright for a media item. | |
| Date Available | The date from which a version or rendition is made available. | |
| Date Issued | The date a particular version or rendition of a media item has been made ready or officially released for distribution, publication or consumption. | |
| Expiration Date | The date after which a version or rendition is no longer available. | |
| Geographic Access Restriction | A value from a controlled vocabulary intended to convey the availability of a media item in certain geographic locations; i.e., a media item is restricted to distribution or access for the areas indicated. | |
| Geographic Access Restriction Type | The kind of geographic access restriction associated with the distribution of a media item. | |
| Rights | All-purpose container field to identify information about copyrights (date and holder) and property rights held in and over a digital asset. | |
| Rights Distribution | Indicates if the asset can be displayed and made available for distribution by or in a commercial service. | |
| Rights Summary | A high-level designation of end-user permissions for the display, sharing and/or modification of a media item. | |
| Rights Summary Modify Type | Paired with Rights Summary, this provides an additional level of end-user permissions associated with sharing and/or modifying a digital asset. | |
| Vended By | The person or organization responsible for having a digital asset included in the Digital Learning Library. Can be considered to be the media item contributor or supplier. | |
Asset Identifiers & Locations |
Provides unique asset ID info as well as location addresses. |
|
| Asset Submitter | The name of the person uploading the digital asset. Names are automatically assigned by the PBS Digital Learning Library asset management system upon uploading of digital media items. | |
| Asset Submitter Timestamp | The date and time when the digital asset was submitted. The date and time are automatically assigned by the PBS Digital Learning Library asset management system upon uploading of digital media items. | |
| DLL ID | The unique system-supplied string used to identify a digital asset and its entire record of metadata descriptions. | |
| Download URL | The download URL is the link to a file that is downloadable by an end user. | |
| External ID | An unambiguous identifier for this digital asset as it is known in another information, media, content or digital asset system. | |
| External ID Source | Paired with the External ID to name the system within which a digital asset is known. | |
| Path to Media Item | The URL for a "pointer asset" that resides on an external server in systems maintained by stations or other contributors outside of the PBS content management system. | |
| Thumbnail | A graphical image preview or proxy suitable for representing the original digital asset in lists or displays of content from a media respository. | |
Formats & Technical Info |
Metadata describing the file formats, codecs, and technical attributes of media items. |
|
| Aspect Ratio | Indicates the ratio of horizontal to vertical proportions in the display of a static or moving image. | |
| Colors | Indicates the overall color, grayscale, or black and white nature of a media item, as a single occurrence or combination of occurrences in or throughout the digital asset. | |
| Data Rate | The amount of data in a digital media file (video or audio) that is encoded, delivered or distributed, for every second of time. | |
| Encoding | Identifies how the actual information in the digital asset is compressed, interpreted, or formulated using a particular scheme or algorithm. | |
| Extent Duration | The playback time for time-based media. | |
| Extent File Size | The size, in bytes, of a digital media file. | |
| Format Digital | The format of a particular version or rendition of an asset as it exists in its digital form, expressed as a MIME type. | |
| Frame Rate | Indicates the frames displayed per second as found in the playback of a video, motion sequence, flash file, or animation. | |
| Media Type General | The general, high-level nature of a media item, identifying the manner in which the file is presented to the observer, e.g., as a sound, text, moving image, etc. | |
| Media Type Specific | A more specific indication of the nature of the content for a media item, identifying the purpose or intended use of an asset within educational settings. | |
| Rendering Window Height | As a suggestion to any consuming application, the height of a displayed media item, in pixels. | |
| Rendering Window Width | As a suggestion to any consuming application, the width of a displayed media item, in pixels. | |
| Sampling Rate | When a media item is digitized, the audio track's quality is sensitive to the sampling rate selected in the transformation process. Sampling Rate measures "How Often " audio data is sampled when that information is digitized. | |
| Time Start | A time stamp for the beginning point of playback for a time-based digital asset. | |
| Title Type | Paired with Media Type General, this metadata element further identifies if a media item exists in whole or as a portion of a parent video or audio program. This metadata is mandatory only for "Video" or "Audio" media items. | |
About the PBS Digital Learning Library Metadata
Current Version of PBS DLL Metadata is 1.2
Genesis of the PBS DLL Metadata
Preliminary drafts of proposed metadata elements for the Digital Learning Library were presented to PBS in February of 2008. Over the course of two years, with the release of version 1.2 of the PBS DLL Metadata in January 2010, the total number of elements was reduced from 109 individual descriptors to the current 69 metadata elements. See our timeline of version changes and the state of the elements on the web page entitled Metadata Schema Changes > Version Control & Change Orders.
This dictionary of metadata elements is considered to be an "Application Profile" because it draws its metadata elements from other established metadata dictionaries and schemas. An Application Profile is a...
...set of metadata elements, policies, and guidelines defined for a particular application or situation. The elements may be harvested from one or more element sets, thus allowing a given application or profile to use pre-established, well-formed, standardized metadata in addition to other metadata descriptors that are created and defined locally (custom metadata). For example, a given application might choose a subset of the Dublin Core that meets its needs, or may select elements from the Dublin Core, another element set, and several locally defined elements, all combined in a single schema. An Application Profile is not complete unless adequate documentation is provided in order to identify and specify definitions, policies and best practices associated with an application profile's use.
http://dublincore.org/documents/2001/04/12/usageguide/glossary.shtml#A
Candidate metadata dictionaries that were referenced and harvested included...
PBCore
Dublin Core
NETA Media Exchange Prototype
IEEE-LTSC LOM (Learning Technology Standards Committee Learning Object Metadata)
WGBH Teacher's Domain
Maryland Public Televison ThinkPort
PBS Teacher's Activity Database
UMAP--Utah Metadata Application Profile from Utah Education Network
ODRL--Open Digital Rights Language Model for Digital Rights Management
vCard Personal Data Interchange Metadata Model
PBS PODS
Must All of the Metadata Elements be Used?
Not all of the 69 element descriptions in Version 1.2 need to be supplied by content contributors. There are three types of metadata in the PBS DLL...
- MANDATORY:
This small group of elements is required in order to provide basic descriptions about a media item and to facilitate searching. - OPTIONAL:
This set of metadata elements can be supplied by contributors if the descriptions exist and will enhance the findability of media items from the repository. - PROVIDED BY PBS:
This set of metadata is primarily supplied by PBS itself for each contributed media item and includes the correlations of media items to state and national core curriculum educational subject areas and learning objectives.
Governance of the PBS DLL Metadata Dictionary
Responsibility for the management of and change orders associated with the PBS Digital Learning Library Metadata solely resides with PBS. The Governance Committee for the metadata and the contents of the Metadata User Guide includes the following individuals...
| Kim Smith | Vice President, Education PBS | kasmith@pbs.org |
| Kathryn Zaharek | Zaharek Knowledge Information Group | kzaharek@gmail.com |
| Jeff Kahn | Principal, Verbena Consulting | jeffkahn@verbenaconsulting.com |
| Peter Pinch | Director of Technology, WGBH Teachers' Domain | peter_pinch@wgbh.org |
| Paul E Burrows | Manager, New Media/Media Solutions/University of Utah IT | pburrows@media.utah.edu |
Who May Employ the PBS DLL Metadata Elements?
Of course, any participating content producer and contributor to the PBS Digital Learning Library must conform their own metadata descriptions to match those used in the PBS DLL digital asset and content management system.
Any other parties may also reference and utilize the metadata elements and their definitions, with an attribution to the PBS Digital Learning Library project.