Putting together my indexing guidelines

Now that decisions have been made regarding the usefulness of our individual metadata elements to the class indexing project, the next task is to create guidelines for the use of our element. While the implementation and use of the Date element would seem to be rather straight-forward, there are still some questions to sort out, such as what date formats should be utilized and the scope of the instructions I will need to include. On the latter topic, this mostly relates to my concern in whether I simply provide instructions for information that I know will be represented, or do I try to set-up guidelines for other contingencies. For example, though the Date element is likely to be restricted to describing dates concerning image creation and digitization for this project, with specific dates associated for each, do I include formatting guidelines for information such as date ranges, even though it is unlikely to be used in conjunction with the Date element in this project?

Dr. MacCall gave my first draft of these guidelines some pretty good feedback, and influenced me to not try to overstep the bounds of my element in the context of this project, so I have tried to pass on information that will only pertain to the specific needs of the Date element. Further, while I always feel it necessary to justify and support my writing, where possible, I was encouraged to keep the indexing instructions as simple and minimal as possible, in order to allow indexers to find the relevant information they need quickly. As such, additional information has been moved to the "Notes" section of my guidelines. I know that there is still some tweaking and editing to go, but think that I'm at least on the right track with this second version of instructions for using the Date element. Feedback is definitely welcome.

DC.Date

Label: Date

Description: The Date element is utilized to identify temporal information associated with the life cycle of a resource, including (but not limited to) its creation and digitization.

Required: No

Repeatable: Yes

Guidelines:  

Dates should be entered as specifically as possible.

If portions of the date are not known, the indexer should use the level of specificity that matches the amount of temporal information that is known.

Full Date: YYYY-MM-DD

Month and Year: YYYY-MM

Year: YYYY

Examples:

Full Date: YYYY-MM-DD

                Ex. Date=”2014-03-20”

Month and Year: YYYY-MM

                Ex. Date=”2014-03”

Year: YYYY

                Ex. Date=”2014”

                               

Notes:

Date entry follows the format prescribed in the W3C Date and Time Formats http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime and the sections for “Years” and “Calendar Dates” under ISO 8601.

The use of other formats may not be prohibited by the software, but can prove problematic to both human and artificial users alike. Please conform to the above guidelines to ensure consistency in data entry and presentation, and allow for potential aggregation of data into other discovery services and catalogs.