Is there any provision in the NSDL_DC schema for providing a unique identifier for use in future NSDL imports of metadata?
The NSDL_DC XML schemas defines the elements and metadata fields for describing a resources, not for controlling NSDL imports or OAI harvests of metadata. NSDL requires a unique identifier, permanent id associated with the METADATA record so that we know to which record we must apply a harvested update, for example. The whole notion of metadata records and their identifiers is dealt with in the OAI Protocol for Metadata Harvesting: http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/openarchivesprotocol.html. Q: I’m not sure what you mean by “all” the records being schema valid – in my mind they will either all be valid or all invalid. A: Each metadata record you provide needs to be valid according to its XML schema. If a particular record has an element not allowed by the schema, then that particular record is not valid. If a particular record has a bad value according to the schema, then that record is not valid.
