Resource Default Locale ★★★★

Most spatial resources contain some textual information written in particular languages. For users it is important that the language of the resource be shared. Default Locale provide a way to record the primary language of the metadata.


Element Name	defaultLocale
Parent	MD_Metadata.identificationInfo>MD_Identification
Class/Type	PT_Locale
Governance	Common ICSM
Purpose	Discovery, Data Management
Audience	machine resource - ⭑ ⭑
	general - ⭑ ⭑ ⭑ ⭑ ⭑
	resource manager - ⭑ ⭑ ⭑ ⭑
	specialist - ⭑ ⭑ ⭑ ⭑
Metadata type	descriptive
ICSM Level of Agreement	⭑ ⭑ ⭑

Definition

Designation of the language used within the cited resource.

ISO Obligation

There may be only one [0..1] defaultLocale entries for the resource in the metadata MD_DataIdentification package. This must be of class PT_Locale.

Discussion

There may be only one default locale for a resource identified in a metadata record. The element “otherLocale” can be use to provide information about alternatively used localised character strings

Best Practice Recommendations

Therefore - in order to meet ICSM good practice, in metadata for data resources, one default language of the resource should be captured if the resource contains language elements, and its character set encoding in MD_DataInformation.defaultLocale. For the users in our region, English should be the default value for language using the ISO 639-2, 3-alphabetic digits code “eng” and the character encoding should be UTF8. If the resource contains multiple languages, capture the dominant one in defaultLocale and populate the sibling element otherLocale with information describing these additional languages in the same manner.

Recommended Sub-Elements

Follow the general guidance for class - PT_Locale

Recommended Sibling Elements

otherLocale - [class - PT_Locale] [0..*] when a resource has information in additional languages
Follow the general guidance for class - PT_Locale

Crosswalk considerations

ISO 19139

MD_DataIdentification/language and MD_DataIdentification/characterSet moved to MD_DataIdentification/defaultLocale:PT_Locale - Make use of the newly added Language and character set localization package for defining local language and character set.

Dublin core / CKAN / data.gov.au

Maps to language

CKAN has one field for language that maps to both Metadata and Resource language fields. ISO 19115 recommends 639-2 3 letter codes. Data.gov.au recommends IETF RFC4646 2 letter codes as primary. See https://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/faq.html#6 for discussion of the differences

DCAT

Maps to dct.language.

Note BC 19-7: It iis unclear if DCAT makes a distinction between the metadata language and the resource language

RIF-CS

No identified mapping

Also Consider

MD_DataIdentification.otherLocale - (codelist - PT_Locale) [0..*] alternate localised language(s) and character set (s) used within the resource
Metadata Default Locale (codelist - PT_Locale) [0..1] contains the language and character set used in the metadata
MD_Metadata.otherLocale - (codelist - PT_Locale) [0..*] provides information about alternatively used localised character strings provides information about alternatively used localised character strings

Examples

XML -

<mdb:MD_Metadata>
....
   <mdb:identificationInfo>
      <mri:MD_DataIdentification>
      ....
          <mri:defaultLocale>
            <lan:PT_Locale>
               <lan:language>
                  <lan:LanguageCode 
                  codeList="http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/" 
                  codeListValue="eng"/>
               </lan:language>
               <lan:characterEncoding>
                  <lan:MD_CharacterSetCode 
                  codeList="https://schemas.isotc211.org/19115/resources
                  /Codelist/cat/codelists.xml#MD_CharacterSetCode" 
                  codeListValue="utf8"/>
               </lan:characterEncoding>
            </lan:PT_Locale>
         </mri:defaultLocale>
         ....
      </mri:MD_DataIdentification>
   </mdb:identificationInfo>
....
</mdb:MD_Metadata>

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UML diagrams

Recommended elements highlighted in yellow

resourceDefaultLocale