Links, introductions and useful sites

General introductions

There are a number of web pages that give a list of metadata resources including various standards and schema homepages. One of the most comprehensive is the IFLA site.

• IFLA metadata resources

Some general and simpler metadata introductions.

• Marty Lucas
  Demystifying metadata
• NISO
  Understanding metadata
• NISO Framework Advisory Group
  A framework of guidance for building good collections
• Murtha Baca (editor)
  Introduction to metadata: pathways to digital information

Resource Description Framework or RDF "... provides the foundation for metadata interoperability across different resource description communities" [Renato Iannella]. As such it is a standard that is worth getting your mind around. While not the easiest to understand the following articles should provide a beginning.

• Renato Iannella
  An idiot's guide to the Resource Description Framework
• Raymond Yee
  Figuring out RDF

OAI (Open Archive Initiative)
The work of this Initiative is underscoring many of the projects in the University. The mission is best described on their web site and is as follows:
"The Open Archives Initiative develops and promotes interoperability standards that aim to facilitate the efficient dissemination of content. The Open Archives Initiative has its roots in an effort to enhance access to e-print archives as a means of increasing the availability of scholarly communication. Continued support of this work remains a cornerstone of the Open Archives program. The fundamental technological framework and standards that are developing to support this work are, however, independent of the both the type of content offered and the economic mechanisms surrounding that content, and promise to have much broader relevance in opening up access to a range of digital materials. As a result, the Open Archives Initiative is currently an organization and an effort explicitly in transition, and is committed to exploring and enabling this new and broader range of applications. As we gain greater knowledge of the scope of applicability of the underlying technology and standards being developed, and begin to understand the structure and culture of the various adopter communities, we expect that we will have to make continued evolutionary changes to both the mission and organization of the Open Archives Initiative."

The OAI work grew out of the E-Print community although it has now expanded to a broader base. One of its areas of interest is a different publication model for scholarly communication.

OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting) defines a mechanism for harvesting metadata that is exposed by data providers (i.e. repositories). "... We [OAI] are guided by the goal to define a low-barrier and widely applicable framework for cross-repository interoperability and believe that exposing metadata is plausible route to such a goal."

It needs to be noted that these records should be unqualified Dublin Core. The Harvesting Protocol among other information also describes how it envisages a record. This would be a useful place to begin. Although OAI-PMH has been linked to date with Dublin Core other communities e.g. CDWA Lite are considering using this protocol for harvesting records.

Other useful links

• MetaMap [Please use Internet Explorer to view, apparently will also work with Amaya]

Unique identifiers:
This is an issue fraught with frustration. There are a number of schemas and standards in the arena but not one, besides the URL, has become an accepted standard. A good overview of the issues are a series of presentations with associated mp3 from a workshop.

• Digital Curation Centre
  DCC Workshop on Persistent Identifiers

Tim Berners-Lee also provides some timely general reminders about URLs.

• Tim Berners-Lee
  Cool URI's don't change

Specific communities

Education

The ELF (E-Learning Framework) has been broadened to the e-Framework for education and research. "The e-Framework is an initiative by the U.K's Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), Australia's Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) and partners to produce an evolving and sustainable, open standards based, service oriented technical framework to support the education and research communities." [e-Framework]

• The e-Framework for education and research
• The e-learning framework

Library cataloguing

One of the more semantically and even syntactically rich schemas is the one used by library catalogues. The current standard is undergoing a redevelopment. Thus the Anglo American Cataloguing Rules will become RDA (Resource Description and Access). A separate and yet interlinked endeavour is the development of an international cataloguing code.

IME ICC (International Meeting of Experts on an International Cataloguing Code)
• 1st meeting
• 2nd meeting
• 3rd meeting


• Resource Description and Access