CARLCore Metadata Application Profile for institutional repositories

A long time ago, in what seemed like another life, I attended the Access 2006 conference as a relatively new systems librarian at Laurentian University. The subject of the preconference was this totally new-to-me thing called "institutional repositories", which I eventually worked out were basically web applications oriented towards content preservation and dissemination. One of the presenters was Mark Jordan, who talked about his efforts to build a harvester and search engine for the institutional repositories for all Canadian academic libraries. And an outcome of that effort was another effort, to build a Dublin Core application profile that academic libraries could adopt to improve the consistency (and thus the usefulness) of the metadata that was harvested.

Fast-forward to a discussion I participated in today as part of the ScholarsPortal Technical Advisory Group, in which the subject of working towards a standard set of metadata for institutional repositories in Ontario was raised. "Wait", I thought, as my hardening synapses attempted to fire, "isn't this a solved problem?" And indeed, I was able to dig up my notes from Access 2006, quickly refreshed my poor biological memory, and tried to track down the CARLCore Metadata Application Profile guidelines that I had thought all Canadian academic institutions had agreed to adopt. And then... 404 galore. The document had vanished from the net.

However, through the power of social networking, the amazing Mark Jordan was able to produce a copy and sent it to me via email, with the okay to redistribute it freely. So... here we go. Let the hard work of the members of that group find a new life, as the guidelines are now once again available at: CARLCore Metadata Application Profile (PDF)

Thanks, Mark!

Aside: Holy heck, when I was a new systems librarian I sure did stay quiet and listen a lot. I should go back to doing more of that. Also: extensive notes published on blog can pay dividends years down the road!