ISO/IEC 19788 specifies, in a rule-based manner, metadata elements and their attributes for the description of learning resources. This includes the rules governing the identification of metadata elements and the specification of metadata attributes.

These metadata elements are used to form the description of a learning resource, i.e. as a metadata learning resource (MLR) record.

ISO/IEC 19788-5:2012 specifies, using the framework specified in ISO/IEC 19788-1, educational aspects of learning resources across various educational, cultural and linguistic settings.