Dublin Core Metadata Element Set (DCMES), which is often called Dublin Core (DC), is a standardized metadata scheme for description of any kind of resource such as documents in electronic and non-electronic form, digital materials (such as video, sound, images, etc) and composite media like web pages. DCMES was developed by Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) organization founded within the OCLC/NCSA Metadata Workshop.

The DCMES standard has two levels: simple DC and qualified DC. The simple DC metadata scheme comprises 15 basic elements that can be used to represent the core features of various resources. Each element is optional, repeatable and can be used in any order.

Beside the original 15 elements, the qualified DS has three additional elements (Audience, Provenance and RightsHolder) and qualifiers, which improve the semantics of the elements.

DCMES implementations are typically encoded using EXtensible Markup Language (XML) and the Resource Description Framework (RDF).

DCMES is defined by ISO Standard 15836:2009, NISO Standard Z39.85-2007 and IETF RFC Standard RFC5013.