Developing a Metadata Standard for Orthodox Christian Canon Law Description: OrthoCCL Metadata Standard Version 1.0

Abstract Canon Law, in the Orthodox Christian Church, is the body of Canons that regulates the lives of its members and has a two-fold meaning, legal and theological. Although for the Orthodox Christian Community these canonical texts play an important role in the life of its members, there is stagnation concerning, inter alia, their documentation, that is, the recording information required for their retrieval, organization, storage, use, and transmittal. Within this context, this article presents the first edition of a proposed Orthodox Christian Canon Law Metadata Standard, henceforth OrthoCCL Metadata Standard. This standard is based on Dublin Core, and more specifically it reuses its elements and at the same time expands them to cover the current needs of this work. The first version of the standard includes 23 elements and 61 element refinements that comprise the metadata terms of the template. A part of the terms was formed and organized based on a semiotic methodology. We expect this documentation standard to form the basis for any future work related to the annotation and exchange of Canon Law data on the Orthodox Christian Religion.