The MODS elements profiled for Sapienza Digital Library - 2019
The SDL MODS profile encompasses the metadata elements necessary for the metadata MODS XML coding.
The profile defines the structural and functional contexts, where elements and attributes can be used, and defines the obligation constraints of the XML elements' existence.
The profile was defined following two main reference guidelines:
- the MODS user guidelines
- the Master List of Data Elements a framework of elements gathered from the profiles of the different digital library projects at the Library of Congress.
The existing MODS profile is applied to the following content types: books, documents, images, videos, maps, hierarchical structures (like serial publications or archival collections), and digital collections.
During the project development the profile was incremented and enriched coherently to the contents' descriptive needs.
The specifications of the SDL MODS profile has required to profile metadata elements with the inclusions of sub-elements and attributes, that were shaped for the application context.
The specifications had improved not only the granularity of the descriptive information, but also the accuracy and the interoperability of the contents' re-use because of the wide reference to local controlled vocabularies, and wherever possible to the Linked Open Vocabularies (LOV).
The SDL semantic model for descriptive metadata has been derived from the SDL MODS profile in order to support further development of Semantic Web technologies for leveraging the SDL data.