IDN Catalogue Profile - Guidance

This is a guide to assist you with creating metadata for catalogued items according to the Indigenous Data Network (IDN)'s Catalogue Profile.

Formal Specification:
If you are after the formal statement of requirements for this Profile, see the Specification Document.

Minimum Metadata ↑

For catalogue metadata statements of resources according to this profile, we need at least the following information for data:

Property Notes
Identifier

Either you have one, or we can create one for you.

See the Identifiers section below
Title Just plain text
Description A single sentence at least, up to multiple paragraphs. Just plain text though.
Creator The ID of a Person or an Organisation in our IDN Data Agents DB
Custodian

As for Creator: the ID of a Person or an Organisation in our IDN Data Agents DB.

Can be the same as, or different to, Creator
Created

The date/year etc. the data was created.

This property is recommended but optional: If you really don't know this, leave it out.

See the Dating section below
Modified

The date/year etc. the data was last modified/updated.

This property is recommended but optional: If you really don't know this, leave it out.

See the Dating section below

See the example below to see each of the

Format ↑

The IDN Catalogue Profile uses a particular, machine-readable, data type for all metadata: RDF.

It's critical that metadata is either supplied in one of the RDF formats or that it be able to be converted into it.

See the examples below for metadata records in RDF.

Supplying non-RDF data

Unless someone else is going to convert your metadata into RDF, you should use the:

Supplying RDF data

If you want to supply RDF metadata to the IDN, or just make your own RDF metadata generally, see what the IDN Metadata Creator tool does - it can show off RDF metadata.

You can also see the Technical Example below.

Identifiers ↑

This Profile relies on web address-style identifiers for things, so you will to provide, or ask us to create, something like this:

That is the identifier for the Koori Health Research Database dataset.

It's unique ID bit is its acronym 'KHRD' and the https://w3id.org/idn/resource/ bit is what the IDN uses to make unique ID's into web addresses that work - are clickable.

Existing Identifiers

If you already have a web address for your data, use that. For example, the Australian Government Indigenous Programs & Policy Locations (AGIL) dataset is already listed in the data.gov.au catalogue at https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/34b1c164-fbe8-44a0-84fd-467dba645aa7, so we continue to use that web identifier. See our listing of that dataset.

Roles ↑

All Agents, that is Organisations & People, associated with resources such as datasets in IDN metadata need to have their role defined.

Th roles we start with are those defined in the well-known ISO's Role Codes vocabulary.

This vocabulary contains standard roles such as:

To this vocabulary, we have added:

Some of these roles are present in the Full Example below.

In the technical versions of the examples below, you will see how pairs of Roles and Agents are grouped together in metadata so multiple Agents and Roles may be described for a single resource.

Agents ↑

All Agents, that is Persons or Organisations, referred to by IDN metadata MUST be registered within the IDN Data Agents DB which is online at coming soon, Jan, 2023!

When registered, Agents are given a persistent identifier web address. Such identifiers may have been created elsewhere, or may be assigned by the Data Agents DB.

For example, here is the persistent identifier for the Australian Data Archive:

This identifier resolves - you can click on it and go to a web page - and it has been assigned by a party other than the IDN, in this case, the Australian Government Linked Data Working Group, which is a source fo many organisational persistent identifiers.

This identifier is present in the Full Example below.

Here is an example of an identifier for an Organisation supplied by the IDN:

Note the use of the IDN's namespace, https://w3id.org/idn/.

If you enter a new Organisation or Person into the Data Agents DB, you will automatically be assigned a new persistent identifier of this form unless you quote an existing one.

Dating ↑

For Created & Modified and all other dates, you are free to use any one of the following formats, but you do have to pick one and not make up your own format:

Type Format Example
Date yyyy-mm-dd 2021-02-28
Year yyyy 2021
Year/Month yyyy-mm 2021-02
Date/Time yyyy-mm-ddTHH:MM:SS 2021-02-28T14:02:23

Please do not use junk values like 00:00:00 for time: select a format that effectively conveys what you know about the data.

Examples ↑

Minimal ↑

A dataset resource with minimal metadata:

For this dataset we have only:

Property Value
Identifier https://w3id.org/idn/resource/BSA
Title Briscoe-Smith Archive
Description Historical population data and biographical records
Agent/Role Australian Data Archive / custodian

This resource is identified only in the IDN's catalogue so it has an web address ID using the IDN's namespace of https://w3id.org/idn/ which is https://w3id.org/idn/resource/BSA. It has a simple title, brief description and a single Agent (an organisation) associated with it, the Australian Data Archive, with the role of custodian.

The machine-readable version of this metadata record is reproduced here in the RDF Turtle format:

PREFIX dcat: <http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat#> PREFIX dcterms:<http://purl.org/dc/terms/> PREFIX iso: <http://def.isotc211.org/iso19115/-1/2018/CitationAndResponsiblePartyInformation/code/CI_RoleCode/> PREFIX prov: <http://www.w3.org/ns/prov#> <https://w3id.org/idn/resource/BSA> a dcat:Resource ; dcterms:title "Briscoe-Smith Archive" ; dcterms:description "Historical population data and biographical records" ; prov:qualifiedAttribution [ dcat:hadRole iso:custodian ; prov:agent <https://linked.data.gov.au/org/ada> ] ; .

Note that the reference to the custodian, the ADA, is by persistent identifier web address, https://linked.data.gov.au/org/ada, that resolves to more information about the ADA. Also, this identifier is known in the IDN's Data Agents DB, so the IDN knows even more information about the ADA than just the simple metadata linked to by the identifier.

This metadata record will not score well on most metrics for FAIR access, governance scores and so on since it's minimal, but it's better than nothing!

Here is the same minimal metadata example as above in RDF's JSON-LD format, just to shown multiple technical formats:

{ "@context": { "dcat": "http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat#", "dcterms": "http://purl.org/dc/terms/", "iso": "http://def.isotc211.org/iso19115/-1/2018/CitationAndResponsiblePartyInformation/code/CI_RoleCode/", "prov": "http://www.w3.org/ns/prov#" }, "@graph": [ { "@id": "https://w3id.org/idn/resource/BSA", "@type": "dcat:Resource", "dcterms:title": "Briscoe-Smith Archive", "dcterms:description": "Historical population data and biographical records", "prov:qualifiedAttribution": { "@id": "_:n4ed1e6643b704c4188c0e3cd15798563b1" } }, { "@id": "_:n4ed1e6643b704c4188c0e3cd15798563b1", "dcat:hadRole": { "@id": "iso:custodian" }, "prov:agent": { "@id": "https://linked.data.gov.au/org/ada" } } ] }

Full ↑

A dataset resource with full metadata:

For this dataset we have a detailed metadata record with the following elements:

Property Value
Identifier https://linked.data.gov.au/dataset/asgsed3/ILOC
Type Feature Collection
Title Indigenous Locations within the Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) Edition 3
Description This is a reference geospatial dataset developed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics... This enables the release of Census of Population and Housing data and other data for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in a meaningful way, while balancing confidentiality and statistical requirements. ...
Date Created 2021-10-06
Date Modified 2021-10-06
License Creative Commons BY 4.0
Rights Copyright © Commonwealth of Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics) 2021
Source https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/standards/australian-statistical-geography-standard-asgs-edition-3/jul2021-jun2026/indigenous-structure/indigenous-locations
Spatial Coverage Australia
Temporal Coverage
Started At Time 2021
Ended At Time 2026
Access Address https://linked.data.gov.au/dataset/asgsed3/ILOC
Themes

Indigenous Demographics

Place

About Indigenous Things
Agent/Role

Australian Bureau of Statistics / custodian

Australian Bureau of Statistics / rights holder

Centre of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Statistics / subject agent representatitve

This dataset is provided by the Australian Bureau of Statistics and is identified by an identifier supplied by them: https://linked.data.gov.au/dataset/asgsed3/ILOC. It's also accessible online at that location.

The machine-readable version of this metadata record is reproduced here in the RDF Turtle format:

PREFIX dcat: <http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat#> PREFIX dcterms:<http://purl.org/dc/terms/> PREFIX idnth: <https://w3id.org/idn/def/idn-data-themes/> PREFIX iso: <http://def.isotc211.org/iso19115/-1/2018/CitationAndResponsiblePartyInformation/code/CI_RoleCode/> PREFIX prov: <http://www.w3.org/ns/prov#> <https://linked.data.gov.au/dataset/asgsed3/ILOC> a dcat:Resource ; dcterms:title "Indigenous Locations within the Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) Edition 3" ; dcterms:description """This is a reference geospatial dataset developed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics... This enables the release of Census of Population and Housing data and other data for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in a meaningful way, while balancing confidentiality and statistical requirements. ..."""@en ; dcterms:created "2021-10-06"^^xsd:date ; dcterms:modified "2021-10-06"^^xsd:date ; dcterms:identifier "ILOC"^^xsd:token ; dcterms:source "https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/standards/australian-statistical-geography-standard-asgs-edition-3/jul2021-jun2026/indigenous-structure/indigenous-locations"^^xsd:anyURI ; dcterms:issued "2021-10-06"^^xsd:date ; dcterms:license <https://purl.org/NET/rdflicense/cc-by4.0> ; dcterms:rights "Copyright © Commonwealth of Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics) 2021" ; dcterms:spatial <https://linked.data.gov.au/dataset/asgsed3/AUS/AUS> ; dcterms:temporal [ prov:endedAtTime "2026"^^xsd:gYear ; prov:startedAtTime "2021"^^xsd:gYear ] ; dcterms:type <http://www.opengis.net/ont/geosparql#FeatureCollection> ; dcterms:accessRights dar:open ; dcat:accessURL "https://linked.data.gov.au/dataset/asgsed3/ILOC"^^xsd:anyURI ; dcat:theme idnth:indigenous-demographics , <https://w3id.org/idn/def/idn-th/place> , <https://w3id.org/idn/def/indigeneity/about-indigenous-things> ; prov:qualifiedAttribution [ dcat:hadRole iso:custodian ; prov:agent <https://linked.data.gov.au/org/abs> ] , [ dcat:hadRole iso:rightsHolder ; prov:agent <https://linked.data.gov.au/org/abs> ] , [ dcat:hadRole <https://w3id.org/def/idn-role-codes/subjectAgentRepresentatitve> ; prov:agent <https://w3id.org/idn/agent/abs-coatsis> ; ] ; .