Announcing Dzaleka Metadata Standard (DMS) v1.1.0

DMS v1.1.0 is now available.

Released publicly in April 2026, Dzaleka Metadata Standard (DMS) v1.1.0 packages the archive standard as both a specification and a working toolkit. The goal is simple: make Dzaleka heritage records easier to describe consistently, validate, search, and export.

For the Dzaleka Heritage Archive, that means a stronger base for working with stories, photos, documents, audio, events, maps, artworks, sites, and poems without relying on ad hoc field names or one-off templates.

What ships in v1.1.0

Schema files in multiple formats

The current public package includes the DMS schema in:

• JSON Schema
• YAML
• JSON-LD

That gives the project a format for validation, a format for documentation and editing, and a format for linked-data export.

A CLI for archive workflows

The documented command-line workflows include:

• dms init for creating a record
• dms validate for checking records against the schema
• dms search and dms stats for reviewing collections
• dms report for generating a browsable HTML catalogue
• dms export for producing JSON-LD
• dms convert csv2json for spreadsheet-based ingestion
• dms diff for comparing record versions

This is the biggest difference between a metadata document and a metadata toolkit: the standard can be used directly in day-to-day work.

A local web UI and taxonomy service

The package also documents DMS Vault, a local web UI started with:

dms web --port 8080 --dir records/

That local interface is paired with a taxonomy API for term lookups, deprecations, change logs, and semantic serializations. In practice, that gives collections work a browser-based entry point instead of forcing everything through raw JSON files.

Linked-data export

The linked-data side of DMS is one of the clearest parts of the current documentation. The project describes mappings to:

• Dublin Core
• FOAF
• BIBO
• Schema.org
• W3C Geo
• SKOS

That does not automatically create interoperability on its own, but it does make DMS records easier to reuse in catalogues, repositories, and other metadata-aware systems.

Supported record types

The current schema overview lists 10 core record types:

• story
• photo
• document
• audio
• video
• event
• map
• artwork
• site
• poem

For Dzaleka, that matters because one standard can cover oral history, community photography, documentary material, public art, and site records without flattening them into a single generic form.

Why this matters for the archive

The strongest case for DMS is consistency. As the archive grows across multiple contributors, collections, and platforms, a shared schema helps keep titles, creators, locations, rights, formats, and relationships readable and reusable.

It also gives the project a clearer path for validation, reporting, and structured export instead of leaving metadata buried in prose or scattered across inconsistent spreadsheets.

Try it

• GitHub repository: Dzaleka-Connect/Dzaleka-Metadata-Standard
• PyPI package: dzaleka-metadata-standard
• Linked-data guide: Linked Data Export

If you want to explore the release as a working tool instead of just reading about it, the CLI and local web UI are the best places to start.