Today, RLG released its most recent revision of their "Descriptive Metadata Guidelines for RLG Cultural Materials" -- an important new guide to descriptive metadata for unique cultural objects.  There is an impressive and well-known array of talent on their Cultural Materials Alliance Description Advisory Group, and yet more in the list of reviewers for these guidelines, so it is no surprise that the resulting document is clear,  informative, and of use to anyone describing collections and their constituent objects in museums, libraries, and archives.

I'm particularly pleased to see that they include downloadable copies of three XML files -- an EAD collection ("Robert B. Honeyman, Jr. Collection of Early Californian and Western American Pictorial Material") and both a MODS collection record and a MODS item record for "Canadian Souvenir View Albums" from the National Gallery of Canada (for more on the Library of Congress's Metadata Object Description Schema see http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/ ).  Such examples are of real practical help as models when one is coming to an XML schema for the first time, or ensuring that your existing ones meet recommended practices.

The new guidelines can be freely accessed at:
www.rlg.org/en/page.php?Page_ID=214 

For more information, please contact RLG's Günter Waibel at [log in to unmask] 

Best, 

David