VRA Core

According to the VRA Core Web site, (http://www.vraweb.org/projects/vracore4/) VRA Core 4.0, (the most recent iteration of this metadata schema) was created by the Visual Resource Association’s (VRA is an organization dedicated to research and education related to managing images) Data Standards Commmittee , and is geared towards the ‘cultural heritage community.’ It can be used to describe works of visual culture, images that document those works, as well as collections of these objects. Version 4.0, released in 2007, is closely related to the content standard CCO (Cataloging Cultural Objects). VRA Core 4.0 can also be used within METS.

The VRA Core Web site includes a PDF “VRA Core 4.0 Introduction,” from which the following info is derived. VRA Core does not really have any required element types, however there are 5 core element types that generally should be described for all works. Those are:

WORK TYPE (what)
TITLE (what)
AGENT (who)
LOCATION (where)
DATE (when)

In VRA Core 4.0, “Agent” is a broader term used instead of “Creator,” and can be refined using sub-elements, such as “name,” “role,” and “culture.” “Culture” would include data about the culture or nationality of that agent. The other element, “Cultural Context” denotes the culture within the work or image was created, which is not always the same.

The VRA Data Standards Committee has also developed an XML Schema for VRA Core 4.0 elements. As such, data is divided into elements, sub-elements and attributes. (The VRA Core 3.0 used ‘qualifiers’ instead of sub-elements and attributes.)

In VRA Core 4.0, attributes can be used to modify an element or sub-element.
Some attributes are global because “they can be used to modify any element or sub-element rather than being tied to any specific one.” These include:
extent, dataDate, href, pref, refid, rules, vocab, source, and xml:lang.

The XML Schema allows collections to share information with others, and VRA Core 4.0 includes both a restricted and unrestricted schema, to offer collections some options for sharing.

VRA Core suggests on their site using controlled vocabularies to populate certain metadata fields. Suggestions include: Thesaurus for Graphic Materials (TGM), Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT), Union List of Artist Names (ULAN), and the Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN). They also suggest using a standard for formatting the data in the record, the Cataloging Cultural Objects (CCO) guidelines.

As with the Dublin Core standard, every record describes only one object. This is referred to as the ‘1:1 priciple.’However, the “relation” can show the ways in which different object and resources are related. These relations can be ‘work to work,’ ‘image to work,’ or ‘image to collection/work to collection.’

There are also administrative elements, like “source” and “rights.” “Source” operates differently for a work or an image record. For the Work Record, “source” includes data about the source of information where the cataloging information is taken from, whereas for the Image
Record source includes data about the publication or person from whom the image is taken.