format

• Obligation:  See Application Profiles
• Occurrence:  See Application Profiles
• Conditions:  See Application Profiles
• Scheme:  See Application Profiles

Element Semantics (Definition)

The physical or digital manifestation of the resource.

General

• Name:  format
• Label:  Format
• Namespace:  http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/
• Registration Authority:  Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI)
• Notes:  Typically, Format may include the media-type or dimensions of the resource. Format may be used to determine the software, hardware or other equipment needed to display or operate the resource. Examples of dimensions include size and duration. Recommended best practice is to select a value from a controlled vocabulary (for example, the list of Internet Media Types [MIME] defining computer media formats).

Best Practices

1. Formats, such as text/html, ASCII, Postscript file, executable application, or JPEG image may be included in this area. Assign a Format from Internet Media Types (MIME types). In principle, the Format element can include physical media such as books, serials, or other non-electronic media.
2. Information concerning the size of a resource may be included in the content of the Format element. In resource discovery this might be used as a criterion to select resources of interest, since a user may need to evaluate whether they can make use of the resource within the infrastructure available to them.

Metadata Encodings Examples

• Resource Description Framework (RDF/XML)
  

  <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
  <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf='http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#'
      xmlns:rdfs='http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#'
      xmlns:dc='http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/'
      xmlns:dcterms='http://purl.org/dc/terms/'>
  <rdf:Description>
      <dc:format>
          <dcterms:IMT>
              <rdf:value>text/html</rdf:value>
              <rdfs:label>HTML</rdfs:label>
          </dcterms:IMT>
      </dc:format>
  </rdf:Description></rdf:RDF>

• XML (Tags & Attributes)
  

  <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
  <record xmlns:dc='http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/'
      xmlns:dcterms='http://purl.org/dc/terms/' 
      xmlns:xsi='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance'>
  <dc:format xsi:type='dcterms:IMT'>
      text/html
  </dc:format>
  </record>

• Crosswalks
  IEEE LOM: 4.1:Technical.Format
  MARC: 856$q