Transforming metadata content guidelines and instructions to linked data

Abstract

Among metadata-related standards, data content standards like metadata guidelines and instructions for creating metadata still remain in legacy forms. This study investigates a way to transform data content standards to linked data (LD) through conversion from other formats, while referring to the proposed layered framework. Under the basic policies for making LD on which this study is based, several principal matters were examined: (a) defining units to be assigned with Universal Resource Identifiers (URIs), (b) defining relationships among the instructions with URIs and (c) expressing instructed content in instructions properly with certain Resource Description Framework (RDF) properties. With the proper choice(s) for each matter, some actual standards were converted to LD: Resource Description and Access (RDA) and Dublin Core User Guide. The results showed that the adopted way of transforming data content standards to LD is valid and proper, and the resultant LD would be expected to be utilised in various manners.