Understand Your Content - Level 2 - Digital Preservation Coalition

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Understand your content
Level 2 - Find this information

Find this information

Now that you know what content you have and where to find access to it, knowing more information about your content will help you identify content which may be more at risk than the rest of your collection.

Dublin Core is a metadata standard with 15 suggested elements that you can use to find and record useful information about your collection. However, you do not need to collect information on all 15 elements if time is short or something on the list doesn’t apply to your content.

Look at the list below, decide what elements you need to collect and add it to your list from level 1.

Element	Description
Contributor	Contributors to the resource (other than the authors).
Coverage	The extent or scope of the resource, e.g. geographic area(s) and/or time period(s) it covers.
Creator	The authors of the resource (listed in order of precedence, if significant).
Date	Date of creation or transfer to the archive.
Description	A description of the content of the resource.
Format	The file format used when saving the resource. E.g. word doc .docx
Identifier	Unique identifier of the resource.
Language	The language of the record.
Publisher	Publishers.
Relation	Relationships to other documents or collections.
Rights	A statement on who owns the rights to content (e.g. copyright)
Source	Where did the record come from?
Subject	Descriptive phrases or keywords that describe the resource.
Title	The title of the document, or the name given to the resource.
Type	A document type; for example, novel, poem, or photograph.

This template will help you include the elements most important to your group.

Next Steps 

The list you have created is the start of a digital asset register. A digital asset register is a detailed list of information about your collections, including information about the content itself, access information and risk data. This register will help you with a wide range of digital preservation tasks. Level three will guide you through the steps of producing a digital asset register and give more information about what it can be used for.  

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