PBCore is a descriptive and technical metadata standard primarily for radio and television collections but applicable to other audio visual collections.  Developed for the US public broadcasting sector PBCore is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license allowing free use, distribution and modification of the work as long as attributed to the authors is given.   Version 1.1 was released in 2007, 1.3 in August 2010 and 2.0 was released in January 2011. 

The highlights: 

• As a metadata standard for media on both analogue and digital carriers PBCore can be applied in database utilities, a cataloguing structure or as a schema to facilitate data exchanges between systems and organisations. 
• Based on Dublin Core, PBCore is made up of five content classes Root Elements, Intellectual Content, Intellectual Property, Extensions and Instantiation. Within each of these classes are multiple information fields.  BPCore can contain as little as three required elements, Identifier, Title and Description to operate with all other elements being optional.  
• Version 2.0 specifically intended to support the concept of linked data sets across the internet.  It is possible to include links to authoritative subject definitions via URL’s to audio visual content metadata.  Using these unambiguous links to subject terms it becomes possible to map these relationships across the web facilitating finding and access. 
• Community of practice and resources available to users include a listserv, cataloguing tools and extensive training and how too documentation.