Date range
Meaning and purpose
Date range describes a period of time during which the information in a metadata record was current. Date ranges may be described for names and locations in the ANDS Collections Registry. Use of date range is optional.
A date range is described using Date from to record the beginning of a date range and Date to to record the end of the data range. These elements can also be used to record only a start date or only a finish date.
Use in Research Data Australia
Date ranges are not displayed or searchable.
RIF-CS best practice guidelines
For names, date ranges should only be used where the name has changed over time and older versions of the name have been recorded in the metadata being provided.
For locations, date ranges should only be used where the address has changed and older addresses have been recorded in the metadata being provided.
Dates are described in UTC and one of the forms described in section 3.2.7 of the W3C's Schema Data Types document. See also background information on dates and times.
These dates will usually be system-generated by the source system.
Dates are stored with time zone information. When a time zone is added to a UTC dateTime, the result is the date and time "in that time zone". For example, 2002-10-10T12:00:00+05:00 is described as 2002-10-10T07:00:00Z and 2002-10-10T00:00:00+05:00 is described as 2002-10-09T19:00:00Z.
RIF-CS v1.0.1
Temporal coverage may have been recorded using Date from and Date to elements in records created using RIF-CS v1.0.1. In those cases location is recorded as having a type of "coverage". Use of the Coverage element is recommended; use of Date from and Date to for recording temporal coverage was a temporary workaround only.
RIF-CS examples
<location dateFrom="1997-01-01T00:00:00Z" dateTo="1997-12-31T23:59:59Z"></location>
| Date | Change history |
| April 2010 | Consultation draft |
| 26 October 2010 | First web publication |
| 15 April 2011 | Corrected to state that dateFrom and dateTo are not searchable |
| 21 Nov 2011 | Clarification around use of date range for recording temporal coverage before separate Coverage element was introduced |
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