ISO/IEC 19788-4:2014 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.

This part of ISO/IEC 19788 specifies, using ISO/IEC 19788-1, technical aspects of learning resources, i.e., requirements for use, location, size, etc.