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Meaning & purpose

A data collection may pass through various pass through various stages in its lifecycle from lifecycle from collection through its many transformations to the publication and preservation stages. The Dates element is a wrapper element for the Date child element that can be used to describe dates associated with an event in the lifecycle of the data collection as provided for in DataCite, Dublin Core and other metadata standards. It is only for use with collection records and is not applicable to party, activity or service records. Use the Dates element where additional information describing data curation and management events will facilitate identification, discovery, access and reuse of the collection.

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The Dates element can be used to describe various dates associated with a data collection. Only use the Dates element where additional information describing data curation and management events will facilitate identification, discovery, access and reuse of the collection.

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Where multiple attribute types are used, a separate wrapper element should be used for each grouping by type and date range.  See XML encoding example 4 below.

XML encoding examples

<dates type="dc.available">
	<date type="dateFrom" dateFormat="W3CDTF">2011</date>
</dates>

<dates type="dc.created">
	<date type="dateFrom" dateFormat="W3CDTF">2009-09-20</date>
	<date type="dateTo" dateFormat="W3CDTF">2010-10-15</date>
</dates>

<dates type="dc.created">
	<date type="dateFrom" dateFormat="W3CDTF">2009-09-20T09:15:00Z</date>
	<date type="dateTo" dateFormat="W3CDTF">2010-01-01T09:45:00Z</date>
</dates>

<dates type="dc.created">
	<date type="dateFrom" dateFormat="W3CDTF">2009-09-20T00:00:00Z</date>
	<date type="dateTo" dateFormat="W3CDTF">2010-01-01T00:00:00Z</date>
</dates>
<dates type="dc.available">
	<date type="dateFrom" dateFormat="W3CDTF">2011</date>
</dates>

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