PBCore
The PBCore plugin for Omeka Classic adds elements from the PBCore Metadata standard to your Omeka site. This metadata standard, developed for audiovisual content, can be used to describe items and files. It can be used in conjunction with the Dublin Core or other metadata elements in your Omeka Classic site.
For guidance on using the PBCore metadata standard, please see the PBCore website.
PBCore in action
Once the plugin is installed, PBCore elements are available in their own tab when a user is adding or editing an item (alongside "Item Type", "File", "Tags", and other metadata tabs).
As with other metadata fields in Omeka Classic, each PBCore element has a description of the element (from the metadata standard) and an input field below. Use the checkbox below the field to use HTML formatting in this field. For elements with multiple values, use the "Add Input" button on the left to create additional fields.
Users can complete as many or few PBCore fields as they wish.
Note
If you input a "Title" and a "Creator" in the PBCore element set, those fields will overwrite any existing data in the Dublin Core metadata to facilitate browsing and sorting.
This will be particularly important to those using a media importer, such as the YouTube Import and Vimeo Import plugins, because those plugins harvest any available metadata from the source site to the DC fields. Design your metadata usage with this in mind.
One of the features of PBCore is the use of related sub-elements, such as "Contributor" and "Contributor Role". If you have more than one value to add to an element that has a related sub-element, use the "Add Input" button to create a field for each value and be sure to enter the values in a consistent order so that they are properly associated.
The example in the image below shows "Contributor" having two entries, "Contributor 1" and "Contributor 2", and the "Contributor Role" having two respective entries in the same order: "Role of Contributor 1" and "Role of Contributor 2".
The PBCore XML output from Omeka will correctly associate the nested elements in a machine-readable way. However, in the web and admin interface, the sub-elements will be displayed as distinct. In the image below, the XML shows a <pbcoreContributor> container for each of the two provided datasets above.
Metadata visibility
You may wish to use the Hide Elements plugin along with PBCore in order to manage the possible duplication of the Title and Creator fields between the PBCore element set and the Dublin Core element set.
When configuring the Hide Elements plugin, duplicate fields can be hidden on the "Add Item" form, the administrative view, the public view, and the search. Using the configuration form, you can customize where and who sees both Dublin Core and PBCore elements.
Add file metadata
In addition to the item metadata, PBCore offers instantiation metadata fields for the files. Instantiation metadata can only be added if there is a file uploaded to the Omeka system.
YouTube Import and Vimeo Import plugins create an embed of the video file without actually importing the file. The importers spoof the creation of a file so that you can add instantiation metadata to the import. (When using these importers, copy any Title and Creator data into the PBCore fields to preserve that information, because the plugin is designed so that the PBCore information overwrites the DC metadata for those fields.)
To access the instantiation fields, first add your file to the item and save. Once your file is attached to an item, you can edit the file metadata by clicking on "Files" from the top item menu and then "Edit" to the right of the desired file. Links to the file metadata also appear in the right-hand detail column of each item admin page.
To assure that visitors can access the instantiation metadata connected to the files, go to the site-wide "Appearance" page and then to the "Settings" tab. Check the box under "Display Settings" for "Link to File Metadata".
Uninstall
While you can uninstall PBCore just like any other plugin, doing so will not remove the PBCore elements from your Omeka site.
Proceed with caution: only do the following if you are sure that you no longer need the element sets and the associated data.
You will need to remove the element sets manually to clear the data from the site. You will also need to delete the element sets prior to reinstalling the plugin.
To remove the element sets, go to "Settings" in the upper navigation of the admin dashboard (only available to Super Users). Click on the "Element Sets" tab. You can then delete the PBCore and the PBCore Instantiation Element Sets.
