title

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

Element Semantics (Definition)

A name given to the resource.

General

• Name:  title
• Label:  Title
• Namespace:  http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/
• Registration Authority:  Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI)
• Notes:  Typically, a title will be a name by which the resource is formally known.

Best Practices

1. Enter one title per element. Repeat the use of the title element to enter more than one title if necessary for access (i.e., caption title, former title, spine title, collection title, series title, artist’s title, object name, etc.) or if in doubt about what constitutes the title.
2. Transcribe title, if there is one, from the resource itself, such as a book title from the title page, the title element from an HTML document (where descriptive of the content) or a caption from a photograph.
3. When no title is found on the resource itself, use a title assigned by the holding institution or found in reference sources.
4. Make the title as descriptive as possible, avoiding simple generic titles such as Papers or Annual report.
5. File names, accession numbers, call numbers, or other identification schemes should not be entered as title information.
6. When possible, exclude initial articles from title. Exceptions might include when the article is an essential part of the title or when local practice requires use of initial articles.
7. In general, transcribe titles and subtitles from the source using the same punctuation that appears on the source. If the holding institution has created the title, then use punctuation that would be appropriate for English writing.
8. Where it is the policy of the cataloging agency to include language translations of one or more significant parts of a metadata record to support multi-lingual search and retrieval, the translated title may be included in the Title Element.
9. Collections:
   1. If multiple items are being described as a collection by one record and no collection title already exists, create a collective title that is as descriptive as possible of the contents.
   2. If each item in such a collection is itself worthy of being described by its own record (i.e. item-level record), refer back to the collection-level title in the Relation element if it is available. Likewise, if the Relation element is available, list any titles for subordinate item-level records in the Relation element of the collection-level record.

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:dc='http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/'>
  <rdf:Description>
      <dc:title xml:lang='en'>
      Jazz in France
      </dc:title>
  </rdf:Description>
  </rdf:RDF>
  

• XML (Tags & Attributes)
  

  <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
  <record xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
  <dc:title xml:lang='en'>
      Jazz in France
  </dc:title>
  </record>
  

• Crosswalks
  IEEE LOM: 1.2:General.Title
  MARC: 245$a (Title Statement/Title proper) If repeated, all titles after the first: 246 33$a (Varying Form of Title/Title proper)