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Find, share and discuss learning and teaching materials via Jorum, a JISC-funded service.

The Repositories Support Project (RSP) is a major JISC initiative to support the development and growth of the UK repositories network.

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Application Profiles

More information on Application Profiles is available on Ariadne

An application profile defines a metadata schema for a repository that draws on one or more metadata standards. It can be defined as a declaration that specifies which metadata terms an organisation, information provider, or user community uses in its metadata schema. It may also make declarations about how the metadata terms should be used. An application profile selects terms from one or more exisiting standards and may opt to refine the use of any of those terms (for example by mandating the use of a particular controlled vocabulary). It may not add terms to an exisiting standard. To add new elements to an application profile which are not in a referencable standard (or other namespace) a repository manager must first define their own namespace and then reference that namespace in the application profile.

Several application profiles are being developed around the Dublin Core standard to meet particular shared needs within the repository community. They include a scholarly works application profile (SWAP), an e-thesis application profile, and an images application profile. The Scholarly Works Application Profile is based on Dublin Core and is intended to support the description of scientific or scholarly research texts. The e-thesis Application profile is based on Dublin Core and is intended to support e-theses produced in UK institutions. The Images Application Profile is based on Dublin Core and is intended to support describing images. There are a number of application profiles available of the IEEE LOM including the UK LOM Core. This application profile was intended to support the sharing of learning materials in the UK.

If a community of practice shares an application profile it can promote richer interoperability and allow more refined search services but this may increase the metadata creation workload. The best advice is to keep a watching brief on how others are managing their repository metadata: regularly review good practice and implement improvements.