Dublin Core vs ISAD(G) for born-digital collections
Feb 22, 2026 11:18 AM
We are starting to catalog a large born-digital collection (approximately 50,000 files) and debating whether to use Dublin Core or ISAD(G) as our primary descriptive standard.
Dublin Core seems more natural for individual digital files, but ISAD(G) preserves the hierarchical context we need for provenance. Has anyone found a good hybrid approach?
We are using Heratio 2.8.2 with the Data Migration plugin enabled.
3 Replies
We faced the same dilemma last year. Our solution was to use ISAD(G) for the intellectual arrangement (fonds, series, files) but Dublin Core for individual items within the lowest file level.
Heratio's multi-standard support makes this fairly straightforward — you can assign different descriptive standards at different levels of the hierarchy.
Thanks James! That's exactly the approach I was considering. Quick follow-up — do you find that researchers are confused by the different metadata displayed at different levels, or is it transparent to them?
We do something similar. For born-digital email collections, we use Dublin Core at the item level with ISAD(G) for the series/fonds context. The key is maintaining the provenance link through the hierarchy even when individual items use a flat metadata schema.