Dublin Core
A widely used standard set of fifteen core metadata elements (title, creator, date, subject, etc.) for describing digital and physical resources in a simple, interoperable way.
Dublin Core is a widely adopted metadata standard consisting of a small, general set of descriptive elements — classically fifteen, including title, creator, subject, description, date, type, format, identifier, and rights. Its goal is simplicity and interoperability: a lightweight, common vocabulary that lets resources be described and discovered across different systems.
Because it’s simple and broadly understood, Dublin Core is often used as a baseline for describing documents, web resources, and digital collections, and as a lowest-common-denominator for sharing metadata between systems. It’s less detailed than specialized schemes (archival description, preservation metadata like PREMIS, or library standards like MODS/METS), so organizations frequently use Dublin Core for general discovery and richer standards where more depth is needed. It’s a useful reference point for any records program designing its descriptive metadata.