Obligation status of AGLS terms

AGLS metadata properties fall into four obligation categories:

Mandatory: these properties must be present in all metadata records;
Conditional: these properties must be present under certain circumstances;
Recommended: there may be valid reasons in particular circumstances not to include these properties, but the full implications must be understood and carefully weighed; and
Optional: these properties are truly optional.

Implementations that use Recommended or Optional properties must be fully interoperable with those that do not.

Although Australian Standard AS 5044 only requires the use of three mandatory properties to create a compliant AGLS metadata record, the Australian Government’s implementation of the standard mandates the use of additional properties by Australian Government agencies. These additional properties are required to support the portal's framework and any future initiatives that may require well-formed metadata for the description of Australian Government information and services. In all cases, it is recommended that agencies use as many metadata properties as necessary to enhance resource description and maximise discovery.

Obligation status

Obligation	Applicable properties – AS 5044 (non-government)	Applicable properties – Australian Government
Mandatory	creator date [see note 1] title	creator date [see note 1] description title type [see note 2]
Conditional (see the following table for trigger conditions)	availability identifier publisher	accessibility availability function identifier language protectiveMarking publisher subject
Recommended (see the following table for guidance)	description function language subject type [see note 2]	audience coverage
Optional	All other properties	All other properties

Note 1: The date property or at least one of the related available, created, dateCopyrighted, dateLicensed, issued, modified or valid properties may appear in a metadata description to be a valid instance of date.

Note 2: The type property or at least one of the related aggregationLevel, category, documentType or serviceType properties may appear in a metadata description to be a valid instance of type.

Obligation status by property

Property	AS 5044 (non-government) obligation	Australian Government obligation
accessibility	Optional	Optional [see note 3]
accessRights	Optional	Optional
act	Optional	Optional
aggregationLevel	Optional	Optional
alternative	Optional	Optional
audience	Optional	Recommended when the audience is not ‘all’
availability	Conditional – Mandatory for offline resources	Conditional – Mandatory for offline resources
available	Optional	Optional
bibliographicCitation	Optional	Optional
case	Optional	Optional
category	Optional	Optional
conformsTo	Optional	Optional
contributor	Optional	Optional
coverage	Optional	Recommended [see note 4]
created	Optional	Optional
creator	Mandatory	Mandatory
date	Mandatory [see note 1]	Mandatory [see note 1]
dateCopyrighted	Optional	Optional
dateLicensed	Optional	Optional
description	Recommended	Mandatory
documentType	Optional	Optional
extent	Optional	Optional
format	Optional	Optional
function	Recommended if subject is not used	Conditional – Mandatory if subject is not used [see note 5]
hasFormat	Optional	Optional
hasPart	Optional	Optional
hasVersion	Optional	Optional
identifier	Conditional – Mandatory for online resources	Conditional – Mandatory for online resources
isBasedOn	Optional	Optional
isBasisFor	Optional	Optional
isFormatOf	Optional	Optional
isPartOf	Optional	Optional
isReferencedBy	Optional	Optional
isReplacedBy	Optional	Optional
isRequiredBy	Optional	Optional
issued	Optional	Optional
isVersionOf	Optional	Optional
jurisdiction	Optional	Optional
language	Recommended where the language of the resource is not English	Conditional – Mandatory where the language of the resource is not English
license	Optional	Optional
mandate	Optional	Optional
medium	Optional	Optional
modified	Optional	Optional
protectiveMarking	Optional	Conditional – Mandatory when not ‘UNCLASSIFIED’
publisher	Conditional – Mandatory for information resources (optional for descriptions of services)	Conditional – Mandatory for information resources (optional for descriptions of services)
references	Optional	Optional
regulation	Optional	Optional
relation	Optional	Optional
replaces	Optional	Optional
requires	Optional	Optional
rights	Optional	Optional
rightsHolder	Optional	Optional
serviceType	Optional	Optional
source	Optional	Optional
spatial	Optional	Optional
subject	Recommended if function is not used	Conditional – Mandatory if function is not used [see note 5]
temporal	Optional	Optional
title	Mandatory	Mandatory
type	Recommended [see note 2]	Mandatory [see note 2]
valid	Optional	Optional

Note 3: The accessibility property is not part of AS 5044-2010. It is included for testing purposes and should be regarded as conforming but unstable.

Note 4: (Australian Government agencies only): The coverage property or at least one of the related jurisdiction or spatial properties should be used when the spatial coverage of the resource is not the whole of Australia.

Note 5: (Australian Government agencies only): In the case of function and subject, at least one of those two properties must appear in a metadata description. In addition, the function property is Mandatory for collection-level descriptions and descriptions of services.