Chief Information Officer

IC Technical Specifications

Information Resource Metadata

Data Encoding Specifications for Information Resource Metadata

Overview

There are two IC enterprise data encoding specifications available for information resource metadata (IRM):

• The first IRM encoding specification is an XML implementation. This specification defines XML elements and attributes, associated structures and relationships, mandatory and cardinality requirements, permissible values, and constraint rules for representing electronic information resource metadata records.
• The second IRM encoding specification is an HTML implementation. This specification defines HTML meta name/content attribute pairs, mandatory and cardinality requirements, and permissible values for representing information resource metadata within an HTML page posted on Intelink. This specification has been in use on Intelink for many years and is known by different names, such as IC HTML.

Compliance with these specifications are measured against all aspects of the technical and documentary artifacts contained within the specification release package.

The IC Chief Information Officer maintains this specification via the Data Coordination Activity (DCA) and Common Metadata Standards Tiger Team (CMSTT).

Technical Specification Downloads

Latest Approved Public Release:

• XML Data Encoding Specification for Information Resource Metadata (V2021-NOV - Standalone Package)
• XML Data Encoding Specification for Information Resource Metadata (V2021-NOV - Convenience Package)
• XML Data Encoding Specification for Information Resource Metadata (V2021-NOV - Light Package)

Mission Requirements

The IC desires improved capabilities to allow users and systems to discover and access a wide-range of information resources throughout the enterprise regardless of format, type, location, or classification. Making information resources visible, accessible, and understandable will go a long way towards achieving this desire.

Employing a consistent “digital” description (metadata) for all information resources provides enterprise-wide discovery and processing capabilities additional levels of producer-generated summary information that can be used to, among other functions:

• Analyze basic descriptive information across information resources of different formats, types, locations, or classifications.
• Understand who produced the information, when it was published, and what topics are addressed.
• Generate and correlate production metrics in order to better understand collection and analytic postures.
• Further protect the information from undesired dissemination based on classification or need-to-know.

Information resource metadata is commonly incorporated directly into and exchanged with an information resource, such as document properties found within most word processing or imagery formats. Information resource metadata may also be exchanged by itself in situations when the information resource itself cannot be shared, as part of a search result set, or when two library systems are exchanging bibliographic records.