Synopsis

This article provides a summary of recent changes to the metadata format for entries archived in the DBL.

Background

The metadata format for DBL began as a description of bundles which were originally text only, and uploaded via Paratext only. The metadata was a structured dump of information pertinent to Paratext projects.

With the addition of the audio entry type, the metadata was elevated from a Paratext artifact to an independent structure. Audio entries were assumed to be closely related to an existing text entry, so the audio metadata represented a subset of what was available in the text metadata, with some additions specific to audio data.

As things evolved, it became apparent that DBL would need to accommodate more media types than text and audio, which resulted in the need to unify the text and audio metadata formats as well as make it as generic as possible in order to minimize disruption when introducing new entry types.

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