Dublin Core, and Omeka, employ DCMI vocabulary to determine Type. The following guide, taken from the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, explains what each Type designation means.
1. Collection
Name: Collection
Label: Collection
Definition: A collection is an aggregation of items. The term collection means that the resource is described as a group; its parts may be separately described and navigated.
2. Dataset
Name: Dataset
Label: Dataset
Definition: A dataset is information encoded in a defined structure (for example, lists, tables, and databases), intended to be useful for direct machine processing.
3. Event
Name: Event
Label: Event
Definition: An event is a non-persistent, time-based occurrence. Metadata for an event provides descriptive information that is the basis for discovery of the purpose, location, duration, responsible agents, and links to related events and resources. The resource of type event may not be retrievable if the described instantiation has expired or is yet to occur. Examples - exhibition, web-cast, conference, workshop, open-day, performance, battle, trial, wedding, tea-party, conflagration.
4. Image
Name: Image
Label: Image
Definition: An image is a primarily symbolic visual representation other than text. For example - images and photographs of physical objects, paintings, prints, drawings, other images and graphics, animations and moving pictures, film, diagrams, maps, musical notation. Note that image may include both electronic and physical representations.
5. Interactive Resource
Name: InteractiveResource
Label: Interactive Resource
Definition: An interactive resource is a resource which requires interaction from the user to be understood, executed, or experienced. For example - forms on web pages, applets, multimedia learning objects, chat services, virtual reality.
6. Service
Name: Service
Label: Service
Definition: A service is a system that provides one or more functions of value to the end-user. Examples include: a photocopying service, a banking service, an authentication service, interlibrary loans, a Z39.50 or Web server.
7. Software
Name: Software
Label: Software
Definition: Software is a computer program in source or compiled form which may be available for installation non-transiently on another machine. For software which exists only to create an interactive environment, use interactive instead.
8. Sound
Name: Sound
Label: Sound
Definition: A sound is a resource whose content is primarily intended to be rendered as audio. For example - a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
9. Text
Name: Text
Label: Text
Definition: A text is a resource whose content is primarily words for reading. For example - books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
