Finding Museum Information in the Internet Commons: A report on the CIMI Dublin Core Metadata Testbed Project

Launched in May 1998, the CIMI Dublin Core (DC) Metadata Testbed is an initiative that is evaluating the Dublin Core Metadata standard for resource discovery for museum information. Testbed participants crerated a test database of over 200,000 records representing an array of collections from around the globe and drafted a guide to best practice for DC use in museums. This paper will report on the results of the testbed's second phase which focuses on completion of the guide to best practice; the identification and recommendation of DC qualifier elements for enhanced descriptive capabilities; the examination of Resource Description Framework (RDF) as an effective method for enabling interoperability between applications that exchange metadata; and initial effort in mapping DC elements to the CIMI Access Points as a step towards providing effective resource discovery.