Metadata for Digital Resource Management

UNTL Metadata: Date

Label

Date

Sub-Element

6.1 Original Resource Creation Date 6.2 Digitally Creation Date

Definition

This element will record dates associated with events in the life cycle of the resources. Therefore, the following sub elements ( qualifiers) may be used: creation date of the original, and digital creation date on which the resource was made available in digital form.

Comment

The date, in combination with other metadata elements, provides evidence of an object's authenticity and provenance. The date information will be recorded in the date sub-elements accordingly.

Required

Yes*

Repeatable

Input guidelines:

· A resource may have several dates associated with it, including: creation date, copyright date, revision date, edition date, modification date, etc. To record dates significant to the history of the digital resources, the following Date Elements and sub element may be used:

Summary of different dates significant to the history of the digital resources in the UNTL metadata system
UNTL Metadata	Definition	Description
6. DATE
6.1 Original Resource Creation Date	Date of Source, creation date of the original (analog or born digital)	This Date element, record the date of creation of the original source item that was digitized. For an image this will be the date that the photograph or slide was taken, for a monograph the date of publication in hard copy, for a video the date the videotape or video disc was released, for a sound file the date that it was issued on disc or tape.
6.2 Digitally Created Date	Date of Digitization	Date of Digital Version record the year in which the object (s) were converted to or created in digital format (born digital eg. digital camera used).

12. COVERAGE
12.2 Time Period	From Controlled term	Eg. Texas Revolution (From October 1835 to April 1836)
12.3 Date	Exact date, if known	YYYY-MM-DD
12.4 Date Range	Depending on the INDEX DATA design, beginning and end dates could be an option too	Coverage Date Range could be first and last day of the year, decade, century, etc. (See example 2 below)

32. ALTERATION HISTORY
32.2 Date of Process	Modification date of the resource	YYYY-MM-DD

33. METADATA CREATION DATE	Date on which the metadata was created	YYYY-MM-DD
34. METADATA MODIFICATION DATE	Date on which the metadata was modified	YYYY-MM-DD

Use separate Date elements to enter multiple dates (or separate each entry by a semi-colon, space within an element) Check INDEX DATA.
The UNTL uses the ISO 8601 standard for recording dates, which is in the form of YYYY-MM-DD (i.e., 2003-01-27 for January 27, 2003).
Use a single hyphen to separate the year, month, and date components, and observe the following general rules for different date types:

i. Single date or Year: YYYY (2003, for the year 2003) - if only year is known;

ii. Year and month: YYYY-MM (2003-01, for January 2003) - if only year and month are known;

iii. Complete date: YYYY-MM-DD (2003-02-08, for February 08, 2003) - if year, month, and day are known.

· For a range of dates, enter the dates on the same line, separating them with a space, hyphen, space as: YYYY-MM-DD – YYYY-MM-DD (1998 - 2003, for 1998 to 2003).

· When the resource being described is a collection-level resource it may be appropriate to express the created date as a date range. ISO8601 standard allows the expression of date ranges when either the start or end dates are unknown. In the case of a collection the date range can be used to describe the collective creation date range of all the other resources, which make up the collection. (eg. 1998 -)

· To show a date is approximate, follow it with a question mark. (eg. 1998? – for approximate year, 1999? – 2003? – for approximate Date range, etc.)

· Further date information pertaining to the resource can be included in the Description element.

· Note Check with INDEX DATA system since it may utilizes other date formats and conventions for date entry. Also, some databases distinguish between free text "display" date values, and normalized date values for more efficient back-end sorting

Examples:

· Example-1: Texas Images Collection
Date Created: "1998-"
Date Created: "2002-09-12"

Example-2: A photograph taken in 1936 of a speech given that same year that was scanned on January 16, 2003. (Depending on the INDEX DATA design and the CV, the following are list of possible values for different date elements)

Date of original (Source): 1936-01-01
Date of Digitization: 2003-01-16 (photo scanned on January 16, 2003)
Coverage Date Type: 1936 (exact year known)
Coverage Date Range (...)
          - Beginning date: 1936-01-01 (first day of the year)
          - End date: 1936-12-31 (last day of the decade)
           - Beginning date: 1930-01-01 (first day of the decade)
          - End date: 1939-12-31 (last day of the decade)
          - Beginning date: 1900-01-01 (first day of the century)
          - End date: 1999-12-31 (last day of the century)

· Example-3: A thesis accepts on Dec. 8, 2002 and is about Texas in the early 20^th century. The thesis was given to the UNT Library on diskette as a PDF file.

Date of (Original) Source: 2002-12-08
Date of Digitization: 2002-12-08 (Same date)
Coverage Date Range
- Beginning date: 1900-01-01 (first day of the early 20^th century)
- End date: 1939-12-31 (last day of the early 20^th century)

· Example-4: An image of UNT Administration building that was taken using a digital camera on January 3, 2003.

Date of Source: 2003/01/03
Date of Digitization: 2003/01/03(Same)

Example-5: Special cases scenarios. If a building (or art object) of 1890 that was photographed on September 25, 1998 and then the photo digitized on January 08, 2003, present a special case. Here, the date of the original building/art object creation (1890) can be recorded under Coverage (element #, 12.3), the date of the photo (1998-09-25) would be recorded under Date of Source, (element #, 6) and the Date photo was digitized (2003-01-08) under Date of Digitization (element #, 6.1).

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