An overview of collection-level metadata

Applications of MetadataBCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group,

Ismaili Centre, London, 29 May 2002

Pete Johnston

UKOLN, University of Bath

Bath, BA2 7AY

UKOLN is supported by:

Emailp.johnston@ukoln.ac.ukURLhttp://www.ukoln.ac.uk/

BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

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An overview of collection-level metadata

• Context : the information landscape• Collections and collection description• CLD in practice • Conclusions: navigating the landscape

BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

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Context

• User – not interested in functional/structural organisation of

resource provider

– doesn’t want to negotiate multiple interfaces

– access across resource provider boundaries

• Service providers – construct various user-centred “portals”

– surface content from multiple resource providers

• Resource providers– deliver content through multiple services

• Crossing of boundaries between contexts

• Rich, complex information landscape

BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

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What is a collection?

• Collection– “an aggregation of physical or digital items”

• Aggregates of, e.g.– natural objects: fossils, mineral samples…– created objects: artefacts, documents, records…– digital resources: documents, images, multimedia

objects, data, software…– digital surrogates of physical objects: documents,

images…– metadata: catalogue records, item descriptions,

collection-level descriptions (!)…

BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

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What is a collection?

• Various criteria for aggregation, e.g.– By location– By type/form of item– By provenance of item– By source/ownership of item– By nature of item content– ….

• Permanent, temporary• Discrete, distributed

BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

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Why collection description?

• Enable provider to– manage collections – disclose information about collections

– overview of otherwise uncatalogued items

– summary where item-level detail inappropriate

• Enable user to – discover/locate (physical/digital) collections– select (physical/digital) collections to

explore/search on basis of summary description

• Enable software agents to – select digital collections to search on behalf of user– perform searches across multiple digital collections

BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

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A Model for Collections

• Research Support Libraries Programme– Support for academic researchers

– discovery of/access to collections– collaborative management of collections

– Primarily physical (library/archive) collections

• Michael Heaney, An Analytical Model of Collections and their Catalogues

• Based primarily on a library and archival view of ‘collection’...

– … but intended to be applicable across wide range of collection types

• Functionally concerned with finding, identifying

BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

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A Typology of Collection Description

• Unitary– info about collection as whole, not about items

• Hierarchic– info about collection as whole, and about items

(and relationships between items and whole)

• Analytic– info about items in collection

• Indexing– info derived from items in collection

BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

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A Schema for Collection Description

• CLD is metadata record• RSLP Collection Description Schema

– structured set of metadata attributes– simple description of subset of entities in Heaney

model

– Collection– Location– Agents

• Based on Dublin Core where possible• RSLP CD instance can be expressed in RDF

– RDF/XML syntax for serialising descriptions

BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

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Administrator Location

Schema vs. model

Collection

Item

Content

Collector

Owner

Producer

Creator

BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

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A Schema for Collection Description

• RSLP CD schema supports creation of “unitary” collection description

• Not a substitute for existing richer schemas for CLD

– a means of creating simple, high-level descriptions for wide range of collections

• Cross-domain– Different ideas of “collections”– Different criteria for defining “collections”– Different ways of describing “collections”– But useful/possible to agree on broadly common

view…?

BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

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CLD in practice: Archives

• Principle that value of individual record derives from context, relationships

• Archival fonds– collection defined by provenance

– records of organisation or individual

– collection of physical items– made available by a physical service

• Archival description– emphasis on “multi-level” resource description– well-established standards for unitary and hierarchical

CD– Encoded Archival Description (EAD) SGML/XML DTD

BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

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CLD in practice: Archives

• Collection described by an EAD “CLD” • CLD

– used in local resource discovery service by repository

– submitted to domain-specific service e.g. Archives Hub

– mapped/transformed to simple, high-level CLD which might be used in cross-domain service

BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

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CLD in practice : RSLP

• Library collections– collections defined by

– location– subject of content– source/owner

– collections of physical items– made available by a physical service

• Library collection-level description– in past, informal, unstructured– use of RSLP CD schema by RSLP projects

• CLDs– used in project-specific services– programme-wide service?

BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

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CLD in practice : the JISC Information Environment

• Content made available as collections• Physical collections

– of physical items (e.g. books)

• Digital collections– of digital items (text, image, audio-video, software,

datasets etc) – of digital metadata records

– describing physical items (e.g. MARC records in OPAC)

– describing digital items (e.g. DC records in subject gateway database)

– describing physical collections (e.g. EAD CLDs in Archives Hub database)

BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

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CLD in practice : the JISC Information Environment

Web Web Web Web

Content

End-user

End-user needs to join services together manually - as well as learning multiple user interfaces

Authentication

Authorisation

Currently….

BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

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CLD in practice : the JISC Information Environment

• Collections of digital metadata records made available by multiple digital services e.g.

– via provider Web site (HTML only)– as OAI repository – as Z39.50 target

• Portals need to determine– which digital collections are available– what digital services available to access collections

• IE service “registry” contains– CLDs for digital collections– descriptions of associated services

BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

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CLD in practice : the JISC Information Environment

Web Web Web Web

Content

End-user

Portal

Broker or Aggregator

Authentication

Authorisation

Collection Description

User Profiles

End-user is “automatically” presented with relevant resources through relevant channels

Thesauri

Service Desc.

The vision….

BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

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CLD in practice : the JISC Information Environment

• Portal– can present dynamically-updated view of the JISC

“information landscape”– view may be tailored to user preferences

• Resource provider– can “surface” resources through multiple

services/channels

BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

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Conclusion: navigating the landscape

• CLDs as resource discovery metadata• CLDs support “survey of information

landscape”• “to identify areas rather than specific features

- to identify rainforest rather than to retrieve an analysis of the canopy fauna of the Amazon basin”

(Heaney, 2000)

• The “navigator” of the landscape may be a human researcher or a software tool

BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group, London, 29 May 2002

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Acknowledgements

UKOLN is funded by Resource: the Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries, the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the UK higher and further education funding councils, as well as by project funding from the JISC and the European Union. UKOLN also receives support from the University of Bath where it is based.

http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/