Metadata for stuff in repositories …
I just wanted to highlight some metadata application profile work that is underway as part of the information environment repository programme. Having attended the birds of a feather session (coordinated by Rosemary Russell, UKOLN and Julie Allinson, University of York) about this at OR08 I finally got to see what JISC had funded. Today at the JISC Repositories and Preservation Advisory Group we discussed some of the work and I guess it made me think it was worth making a few more people aware of it. JISC has funded the development of:
metadata application profiles based on Dublin Core for:
Scholarly works
Geo-spatial data/information
Images
Multi-media
And we’ve also funded some work to assess what might be done in terms of application profiles for the following:
Learning objects
Scientific data
A little bit of context…
After using OAI-PMH across repositories in the JISC Focus on Access to Institutional Repositories (FAIR) programme the experience was that Dublin Core was often not rich enough to be very useful to end user applications. The requirement for both metadata and full text indexing was a specific recommendation of the FAIR ePrints UK harvest and search project. After other work also confirmed this the response was to seek to add to basic DC by developing an application profile. The scholarly works application profile (SWAP) was developed by Julie Allinson (at the time UKOLN now University of York) and Andy Powell (Eduserv Foundation). SWAP aims to help support richer search functions and also to support full text indexing, and as I understand it another benefit is navigation between different versions. It is based on the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) model which uses the following entities: work, expression, manifestation and item.
You can read more about SWAP here:
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue50/allinson-et-al/
SWAP, although based on a FRBR type model was kept quite simple. It seems that when creating SWAP some hard lines were drawn to avoid too much complexity and from the feedback I have heard it seems to have addressed requirements. It was certainly good to hear from one of the attendees at the OR08 meeting that SWAP was “exactly what they required”. Mick Eadie (Visual Arts Data Service, University College for the Creative Arts) also described the images AP at the OR08 meeting, and it seems to have tried to keep a simple approach too. A draft of the images AP is now out for comment. See:
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/index/Images_Application_Profile
Of course to get the real benefit of these application profiles the implementation of them has to be made as easy as possible and we need to encourage take-up. Working with repository software providers to support the APs is one thing that might be possible and the teams supporting the work intend to do this. SWAP has been implemented at Warwick University as they customised EPrints software to support it.
If you really want to help or know someone that can 
a job advert is currently out for a related metadata advocacy post at UKOLN: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/vacancies/08H127A/job-ad/
Note that SWAP is the most mature of the APs; the other areas are in initial draft and are still being developed.
Here are some related links:
SWAP:
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/index/Eprints_Application_Profile
The geo spatial work that James Reid, EDINA (University of Edinburgh) is leading on is currently out for comment:
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/images/e/ef/Geospatial_Application_Profile.doc
Work done by Phil Barker, CETIS, (Heriot-Watt University) on the learning material application profile is here:
http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/lmap/domainModel.draft1.html
It is probably worth mentioning that previously some work has been done for learning materials/objects. See information on RLLOMAP: http://www.intute.ac.uk/publications/rdn-ltsn/ap/
and: http://standards-catalogue.ukoln.ac.uk/index/UK_LOM_Core
RLLOMAP seems to have a similar aim to the current work in that it was to support the exchange of metadata using OAI-PMH and UK LOM did build on this.
Not surprisingly the multi-media application profile is a tough one and drafts are not yet available as far as I know. But I do know via Pete Johnston (Eduserv Foundation) that there are some early results being reviewed! Gayle Calverley is leading the work in this area.
There is also the DCMI Scholarly Communications Community where discussion should take place about the application profiles once the work picks up as a whole (coordination and outreach is currently being planned):
http://dublincore.org/groups/scholar/
Comments
3 Responses to “Metadata for stuff in repositories …”
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Hi (Neil?),
Interesting post. The one work area you didn’t provide a link to further information was for scientific data. The DataShare project is working on how to qualify DC for datasets in repositories, and we are not finding a lot of pre-existing work on this to refer to. Can you tell me where to look for the JISC-funded activity on this please? Also, does JISC intend to pursue a DC application profile for scientific data or is that considered too broad/generic? - thanks in advance.
Hi Robin,
There wasn’t a link to the scientific data work; well spotted! We know this is an area where a generic profile will be a challenge, to say the least, so the work is more exploratory. It will assess what we can do and whether it is worth doing something. The work is exploring whether one or a small number of application profiles would be possible and beneficial. If it is decided there isn’t a practical way to address this then hopefully it might come up with some direction in terms of how we improve cross discipline search and discover. UKOLN are due to start this work shortly. (By the way it was Rachel not Neil J or G!) Thanks, Rachel
hi all,
in researching all manner of metadata matters for a u.s. national park service (nps) project, i came across mention of the DRYAD project at university of north carolina, which may be relevant to both jisc and robin’s org vis-a-vis building repositories for scientific data sets and developing corresponding metadata application profiles; here’s the link to their wiki:
https://www.nescent.org/wg_digitaldata/Main_Page
i’ve gotten a lot of helpful information and good examples of guidance and documentation from jisc by the way. so thanks for that!
regards,
amalin ferguson
nps library program manager
amalin_ferguson@nps.gov
(415) 747-8889
national park service (nps)
office of the chief information officer (ocio)
national information systems center (nisc)
resource information services division (rimd)
digital information services branch (disb)