National foreword

This British Standard is the UK implementation of EN ISO/IEC 19788‑2:2026. It is identical to ISO/IEC 19788‑2:2026. It supersedes BS EN ISO/IEC 19788‑2:2012, which is withdrawn.

The UK participation in its preparation was entrusted to Technical Committee IST/43, Information technology for learning, education and training.

A list of organizations represented on this committee can be obtained on request to its committee manager.

Contractual and legal considerations

This publication has been prepared in good faith, however no representation, warranty, assurance or undertaking (express or implied) is or will be made, and no responsibility or liability is or will be accepted by BSI in relation to the adequacy, accuracy, completeness or reasonableness of this publication. All and any such responsibility and liability is expressly disclaimed to the full extent permitted by the law.

This publication is provided as is, and is to be used at the recipient’s own risk.

The recipient is advised to consider seeking professional guidance with respect to its use of this publication.

This publication is not intended to constitute a contract. Users are responsible for its correct application.

Compliance with a British Standard cannot confer immunity from legal obligations.

This British Standard was published under the authority of the Standards Policy and Strategy Committee on 30 September 2026.

This European Standard was approved by CEN on 8 November 2025.

CEN members are bound to comply with the CEN/CENELEC Internal Regulations which stipulate the conditions for giving this European Standard the status of a national standard without any alteration. Up-to-date lists and bibliographical references concerning such national standards may be obtained on application to the CEN-CENELEC Management Centre or to any CEN member.

This European Standard exists in three official versions (English, French, German). A version in any other language made by translation under the responsibility of a CEN member into its own language and notified to the CEN-CENELEC Management Centre has the same status as the official versions.

CEN members are the national standards bodies of Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Republic of North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye and United Kingdom.

European foreword

This document (EN ISO/IEC 19788‑2:2026) has been prepared by Technical Committee ISO/IEC JTC 1 "Information technology" in collaboration with Technical Committee CEN/TC 353 “Technologies supporting education and learning processes” the secretariat of which is held by UNI.

This European Standard shall be given the status of a national standard, either by publication of an identical text or by endorsement, at the latest by March 2027, and conflicting national standards shall be withdrawn at the latest by March 2027.

Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this document may be the subject of patent rights. CEN shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights.

This document supersedes EN ISO/IEC 19788‑2:2012.

Any feedback and questions on this document should be directed to the users’ national standards body/national committee. A complete listing of these bodies can be found on the CEN website.

According to the CEN-CENELEC Internal Regulations, the national standards organizations of the following countries are bound to implement this European Standard: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Republic of North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye and the United Kingdom.

Endorsement notice

The text of ISO/IEC 19788‑2:2026 has been approved by CEN as EN ISO/IEC 19788‑2:2026 without any modification.

Foreword

ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) and IEC (the International Electrotechnical Commission) form the specialized system for worldwide standardization. National bodies that are members of ISO or IEC participate in the development of International Standards through technical committees established by the respective organization to deal with particular fields of technical activity. ISO and IEC technical committees collaborate in fields of mutual interest. Other international organizations, governmental and non-governmental, in liaison with ISO and IEC, also take part in the work.

The procedures used to develop this document and those intended for its further maintenance are described in the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 1. In particular, the different approval criteria needed for the different types of document should be noted. This document was drafted in accordance with the editorial rules of the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2 (see www.iso.org/directives or www.iec.ch/members_experts/refdocs).

ISO and IEC draw attention to the possibility that the implementation of this document may involve the use of (a) patent(s). ISO and IEC take no position concerning the evidence, validity or applicability of any claimed patent rights in respect thereof. As of the date of publication of this document, ISO and IEC had not received notice of (a) patent(s) which may be required to implement this document. However, implementers are cautioned that this may not represent the latest information, which may be obtained from the patent database available at www.iso.org/patents and https://patents.iec.ch. ISO and IEC shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights.

Any trade name used in this document is information given for the convenience of users and does not constitute an endorsement.

For an explanation of the voluntary nature of standards, the meaning of ISO specific terms and expressions related to conformity assessment, as well as information about ISO's adherence to the World Trade Organization (WTO) principles in the Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) see www.iso.org/iso/foreword.html. In the IEC, see www.iec.ch/understanding-standards.

This document was prepared by Joint Technical Committee ISO/IEC JTC 1, Information technology, Subcommittee SC 36, Information technology for learning, education and training, in collaboration with the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) Technical Committee CEN/TC 353, Technologies supporting education and learning processes, in accordance with the Agreement on technical cooperation between ISO and CEN (Vienna Agreement).

This second edition cancels and replaces the first edition (ISO/IEC 19788‑2:2011), which has been technically revised. It also incorporates the Amendment (ISO/IEC 19788‑2:2011/Amd 1:2016).

The main changes are as follows:

application of the ISO/IEC 19788‑1:2024 framework, namely the use of the term ”property” (P) is used instead of “data element specification” (DES) which becomes deprecated;
new domain and property attributes, such as Label and Canonical Identifier, are introduced.

A list of all parts in the ISO 19788 series can be found on the ISO and IEC websites.

Any feedback or questions on this document should be directed to the user’s national standards body. A complete listing of these bodies can be found at www.iso.org/members.html and www.iec.ch/national-committees.

Introduction

The ISO/IEC 19788 series specifies, in a rule-based manner, properties and their attributes for the description of learning resources. This includes the rules governing the identification of properties and the specification of their attributes. These properties may be used to form the description of a learning resource, i.e. as a metadata learning resource (MLR) record described in ISO/IEC 19788‑8:2015 Data elements for MLR records.

This document uses the property specification model and framework provided in ISO/IEC 19788‑1:2024 to describe the properties of Dublin Core ISO 15836‑1:2017 Core elements^[1^] and ISO 15836‑2:2019 Properties and classes^[2^] so that they can be used with other properties of ISO/IEC 19788 series, addressing specific user communities' needs for extensions, modularization or refinement.

1 Scope

This document provides a set of properties for the description of learning resources from ISO 15836‑1 and ISO 15836‑2 using the framework provided in ISO/IEC 19788‑1. This document specifies properties whose codomain is "literal" (as considered in early Dublin Core) and properties whose codomain is a resource class; the ISO 15836 series implicitly allowing both. This provides full interoperability at the time of expressing existing Dublin Core records with MLR, while allowing a linked data approach for the description of learning resources.

2 Normative references

3 Terms and definitions

4 Symbols and abbreviated terms

5 Resource classes from other standards or locally defined

5.1 General

5.2 The resource class “Resource”

5.3 The resource class “Person”

5.4 The resource class “Information resource”

5.5 The resource class “Right statement”

6 Properties whose domain is class Information Resource

6.1 General

6.2 Title (P0100)

6.3 Creator (P0200)

6.4 Subject (P0300)

6.5 Description (P0400)

6.6 Publisher (P0500)

6.7 Contributor (P0600)

6.8 Date (P0700)

6.9 Type (P0800)

6.10 Format (P0900)

6.11 Identifier (P1000)

6.12 Source (P1100)

6.13 Language (P1200)

6.14 Relation (P1300)

6.15 Coverage (P1400)

6.16 Rights (P1500)

6.17 Creator (P1600)

6.18 Subject (P1700)

6.19 Description (P1800)

6.20 Publisher (P1900)

6.21 Contributor (P2000)

6.22 Source (P2100)

6.23 Relation (P2200)

6.24 Rights (P2300)

7 Generic content value rule sets from other standards or locally defined

7.1 Generic content value rule sets from 19788-1 and other documents (by reference only)

7.2 Global content value rule sets introduced in this document

Bibliography